Shanteau will compete despite cancer

July 12, 2008

ATLANTA - When Eric Shanteau touched the wall second at the U.S. Olympic trials, he was overcome by the joy of reaching a lifelong goal.

The celebration didn't last long.

Shanteau had barely earned his trip to Beijing when he was forced to deal with the gut-wrenching choice between having surgery for the testicular cancer hardly anyone knew about or putting it off for a month so that he could swim in his first Olympics.

Shanteau chose the Olympics.

He learned a week before leaving for the Olympic trials that he has cancer, he told the Associated Press.

"I was sort of like, 'This isn't real. There's no way this is happening to me right now,'" he said by telephone from the team's training camp in California. "You're trying to get ready for the Olympics and you just get this huge bomb dropped on you."

His doctors cleared him to compete at the trials in Omaha, Neb., this month, determining that he would not run a great risk by delaying treatment. Then, Shanteau surprisingly made the team in the 200-meter breaststroke, finishing second ahead of former world-record holder and heavy favorite Brendan Hansen.

He is putting off surgery because it would keep him out of the water for at least two weeks and ruin his Beijing preparations.

The 24-year-old Georgia native will be monitored closely during the next month by U.S. Olympic team doctors and vows to withdraw if there is any sign his cancer is spreading.

"If I didn't make the team, the decision would have been easy: Go home and have the surgery," said Shanteau, who grew up in suburban Atlanta. "I made the team, so I had a hard decision. But by no means am I being stupid about this."

Still, there are no guarantees.

"With any cancer, you want to find it early and treat it early for the best outcome," Dr.Brett Baker, the Austin, Texas-based urologist who gave Shanteau the news, said yesterday. "That was my recommendation. It's difficult to say in his scenario what to expect. The risk, of course, is that time is an opportunity for disease progression."

E-mail

Reprint

Get home delivery of The Sun and save over 50% off the newsstand price

Shanteau will compete despite cancer

Online resources

Going deep

Going deep Sun sports special reports and in-depth coverage
	> 1983 O's > Recruiting Tavon Austin > Football: The tie that binds > Orioles > Baltimore Colts > Going deep: Other sports

Shanteau will compete despite cancer

Related topic galleries: Health Treatments, Diseases, Trials, Therapies, Multi-Sport Events, Cancer

Popular stories: Sports

Poll: Is Phelps the greatest Olympian ever?

Online resources

Going deep