the return of Luisa Stefani on the tennis circuit after a year couldn’t have been better. The Brazilian won the WTA in Chennai this Sunday, September 18, 2022, alongside the Canadian Gabriela Dabrowski.

The duo beat Anna Blinkova and Georgian Natela Dzalamidze 2 sets to 0 in the final, with splits of 6/1 and 6/2. Stefani and Dabrowski already had a title together and shared the court with some consistency, until the Brazilian suffered a serious injury at the 2021 US Open.

Stefani was at her best moment of her career, a month after winning with Laura Pigossi the first Olympic medal in the history of Brazil in tennis. The Brazilians won bronze at Tokyo 2020, in an unexpected and historic campaign.

A tear in one of his knee ligaments during a US Open match led to surgery and a year-long recovery. During this time, Dabrowski has built a fruitful partnership with Mexican Guiliana Olmos. Both are in second place in the hunt for this year’s WTA Finals.

Therefore, despite returning to the Canadian side, Stefani will have to compete for the remainder of the season with another player, Japan’s Ena Shibahara. Interestingly, the duos face off in the first round of WTA Tokyo, starting September 19.

In April, Luisa Stefani spoke with Olympics.com about her plans for the future, which include returning to singles and qualifying for Paris 2024. Check out some excerpts from the interview below.

Luisa Stefani and her plans for her comeback

While recovering, Luisa Stefani started training with Leo Azevedo, also aiming for a possible return to singles competitions.

“I want to play singles again, so that’s one of the main things I asked him for help with, to give me that vision,” she told Olympics.com.

However, in order to play singles, she must regain her doubles ranking first.

“I like both [simples e duplas]. Obviously I’ve been focusing more on doubles in recent years, but that was already one of the things I wanted to do for 2022. It turned out that everything had to be extended because of the injury. But I was already thinking of playing singles tournaments after the US Open to improve my ranking. As I “reset” it now, I will be able to work on it. But I will still continue to play doubles, especially at the beginning.”

“Little by little, I’ll try to reconcile. Maybe I can do a singles tour in smaller tournaments. In bigger ones, there’s always qualifying and you can ask for an invite. That’s maybe difficult at first, but if I get the result, the ranking will go up.”

Two years from Paris 2024, Stefani will try to compete in singles at the next Olympic Games.

“There is still time, but [as Olimpíadas] are definitely the priority. Playing singles would also be the biggest dream. Better yet, play all three brackets: singles, doubles and mixed doubles…that would be the pinnacle, the best thing!”

With the experience of being an Olympic medalist, Stefani was inspired by an Olympic champion, the gymnast Rebecca Andradeto face such a difficult recovery.

“Obviously Rebeca has a very inspiring story, even more so now that I also had a knee injury. She went through several [cirurgias no joelho] and came back, doing everything she did [medalhas Olímpicas de ouro e prata] in Tokyo. It was very special and very inspiring to me.”

Stefani also celebrated the good phase of Brazilian women’s tennis. In April, Beatriz Haddad Maia has already shown his potential to break into the top 20 in singles, as he did in the second half.

“That’s what we want. And we’re going to have more and more of them. Sometimes in Grand Slams I missed the Brazilian girls together. Now the girls will come too. We want this generation to fight in big tournaments , giving visibility to the sport.”

MORE | Read the full interview with Luisa Stefani