U.S. Swimmer Makes Tough Choice to Compete

“He’s always been a guy who keeps his cards close,” Ian Crocker said.

Unbeknownst to Crocker and all but Shanteau’s inner circle, the 24-year-old swimmer was facing an excruciating choice. After beating Brendan Hansen to win a spot on the Olympic team in the 200-meter breaststroke, Shanteau had to decide whether he would compete in Beijing.

Only a week earlier, doctors had told Shanteau he had testicular cancer. Now he was faced with a difficult choice: undergo immediate surgery, or wait until after the Olympics.

“If I didn’t make the team, the decision would have been easy: Go home and have the surgery,” Shanteau told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview released Friday. “I made the team, so I had a hard decision.”

In the end, Shanteau chose Beijing. When caught early, testicular cancer is among the most treatable forms of cancer, and Shanteau’s doctors determined that it had not spread. He will monitor the cancer closely. If there is any sign it has advanced, he will withdraw from the team.

“I was sort of like: ‘This isn’t real. There’s no way this is happening to me right now,’ ” Shanteau told The Associated Press. “You’re trying to get ready for the Olympics, and you just get this huge bomb dropped on you.”

Shanteau broke the news to his teammates Thursday. Dara Torres, the 41-year-old who dominated the headlines at the trials last week, said the room was silent as Shanteau spoke. Her father recently died of cancer. “I immediately thought of my father and got tears in my eyes, then thought about how young and brave this young man is and more tears started to well up,” she wrote in an e-mail message. “He is the real hero on this team.”

His decision to go public with the disease was applauded by the cyclist Lance Armstrong, one of the most public faces of testicular cancer. “I think he’s very brave to open up and tell his story to the whole world,” said Armstrong, who was diagnosed with a more advanced form of the disease when he was 25, and went on to win seven Tours de France. “I think at the Olympics he will swim like a man possessed because he’s been reminded of how fragile his life — and our life — is.”

Armstrong, who spoke in a telephone interview from San Francisco, said he was aware of the diagnosis because Shanteau’s coach had contacted his agent for the name of a testicular cancer specialist. Armstrong said he passed along the name of Dr. Larry Einhorn, the doctor who had treated him.

Shanteau saw a doctor after he noticed an abnormality that was later found to be malignant. Testicular cancer is commonly diagnosed among men in their late teens and 20s, said Dr. Judith Kaur, a professor of oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

“This particular cancer is almost always treatable and highly curable, so that makes a big difference in terms of having some flexibility as the timing of something like surgery,” said Kaur, who said she was not familiar with the details of Shanteau’s case.

Shanteau grew up in suburban Atlanta and graduated from Auburn, then trained in Texas with the University of Texas swimming coach Eddie Reese. He was not expected to make the Olympic team, but he nabbed a spot when Hansen, a former world record holder who was considered the overwhelming favorite, fell behind in the final lap. Shanteau came in second, behind Scott Spann.

Armstrong said Shanteau was likely to become an instant hero. “Cancer survivors from all over the world will say, ‘This is our guy,’ ” Armstrong said. “I think it’s a powerful force. I know I will be sitting back and cheering him on.”