London | Britain's Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, will make a rare public appearance amid ongoing cancer treatment to present the winning trophy at the men's tennis single's final of the Wimbledon Championships in London, her Kensington Palace office announced on Saturday.
The senior royal, herself a tennis player, will attend the final of the tournament on Sunday in her role as Patron of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club since 2016. She will then present the Grand Slam trophy to either Novak Djokovic or Carlos Alcaraz after their much-anticipated clash on the grass court.
“The Princess of Wales, Patron of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club will attend the Gentlemen's Singles Final of The Championships, Wimbledon on Sunday 14th July,” Kensington Palace said in a statement.
It will mark only the second official public appearance since the 42-year-old princess revealed she was undergoing preventative chemotherapy following a cancer diagnosis.
Last month, she attended King Charles III's annual birthday parade, known as Trooping the Colour, where she joined her father-in-law, husband Prince William and their three children – Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis – on the Buckingham Palace balcony for the customary photograph. It was her first official royal engagement since abdominal surgery earlier in the year and her social media revelation of a diagnosis of an undisclosed form of cancer in March.
Ahead of the appearance in early June, she issued a statement to stress that she plans to take things slow to give her body time to heal.
She said at the time: “As anyone going through chemotherapy will know, there are good days and bad days,” she said, adding her treatment is ongoing and will be for a few more months.
"I am learning how to be patient, especially with uncertainty. Taking each day as it comes, listening to my body, and allowing myself to take this much needed time to heal." While she is on the tennis court in London, Prince William will be flying to Berlin to watch England take on Spain in the finals of Euro 2024 in Germany.
In his role as President of the Football Association (FA), the 42-year-old Prince of Wales has been cheering the England football team, known as the Three Lions, through the tournament in which they made it to their first Euros final on foreign soil earlier this week.