Shanteau Plans to Put Off Surgery Until After Olympic Games

July 11, 2008 -- ATLANTA -- Olympic swimmer Eric Shanteau is heading to Beijing with a devastating diagnosis: He has cancer.

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Shanteau said he learned just a week before the Olympic trials in Omaha, Neb., that he has testicular cancer. His doctors cleared him to compete in that meet and he surprisingly made the team in the 200-meter breaststroke, finishing second ahead of former world-record holder and heavy favorite Brendan Hansen.

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

Although Shanteau's doctors advised him to have surgery immediately, he's planning to put it off until after Beijing because he doesn't want to disrupt his lifelong goal of swimming in the Olympics. The 24-year-old Georgia native will be monitored closely during the next month, and he vows to drop out of the Olympics if there's any sign his cancer is spreading.

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

Shanteau stressed he's not willing to risk his life just to swim in his first Olympics. But, after considering the benefits of immediate treatment, he decided to put off surgery because it would keep him out of the water for at least two weeks, ruining his Beijing preparations.

The cancer was found after Shanteau noticed an abnormality and was finally persuaded by his girlfriend to see a doctor.

At his initial examination, Shanteau was told it was probably nothing more than a benign cyst. But an ultrasound showed the possibility of something more sinister, so he was sent to a specialist. On June 19, exactly one week before he was scheduled to leave for the trials, Shanteau got the news.

"It almost numbed me," he said. "I'll remember that day for the rest of my life. Talk about a life-changing experience. That's as big a one as you can have, I think. You're changed for the rest of your life. The few people I've talked to who've gone through this -- and they're all much, much older than I am -- say I'll know that even more in 10 years."