Shanteau to swim despite cancer

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 locked up his trip to Beijing when he was forced to deal with a gut-wrenching choice: Should he have surgery for the testicular cancer hardly anyone knew about? Or, should he put it off for another month so he could swim at his first Olympics?

Shanteau chose the Olympics. Surgery will have to wait.

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Shanteau said he learned just a week before leaving for the U.S. Olympic trials that he has cancer.

"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 pre-Beijing 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., determining he wouldn't be at great risk to delay 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's putting off surgery until after the Olympics because it would keep him out of the water for at least two weeks, ruining his Beijing preparations. The 24-year-old Georgia native will be monitored closely over the next month by U.S. Olympic team doctors and vows to withdraw if there's 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 delivered the news to Shanteau, said Friday. "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."

Seeking out advice from team doctors and other outside experts, Shanteau came up with own plan. He will have his blood tested once a week and a CT scan done every two weeks through the Olympics.