(Sports Network) - You could hear a pin drop when Eric Shanteau got his teammates together and told them what had been on his mind, that's what Dara Torres said. Michael Phelps and some of the other U.S. swimmers played cards with Shanteau while they waited last week for the swimming program to start in Beijing, just regular guys sitting around the athletes village, getting the dorm room experience some of them never had. Except one of them was not like the others. Eric Shanteau had cancer.

"Why me?" turned into "Why now?" when the breaststroker was diagnosed with slow-growing, Stage 1 testicular cancer on June 19, just weeks before he was to swim in the U.S. trials for his last chance to make an Olympic team.

Shanteau had a decision to make: Surgery or the Olympics?

Cleared to swim by his doctors, Shanteau first had to qualify for a flight to Beijing, no easy feat on a U.S. team stacked to the high-water mark with talent. Shanteau finished second in the final stage of qualifying -- ahead of breaststroke specialist Brendan Hansen no less -- and suddenly "What if?" became "What now?"

Shanteau would postpone surgery, determined to fulfill a longtime dream to swim in the Olympics. He had missed out on Athens in 2004 and he wasn't going to let anything get in the way this time.

And so Shanteau gathered his teammates together last month and told them why his celebration had been so muted that night in Omaha when he qualified, why it seemed like he wasn't as excited as he should have been.

"Everyone was pretty much in shock," said Torres, who at 41 is a mothering figure to these U.S. swimmers.

Shanteau was told he had better than a 95 percent chance of survival. Whew. But is a five-percent chance the other way really that much of a relief? If you've never known anyone stricken by cancer, ask somebody who has. The word itself is chilling, face-changing, mood altering. Which is why his Olympic teammates were in awe that he chose competing over treatment, fulfilling the dream of a lifetime over prolonging his own.

"He's so amazing," Torres gushed.

Shanteau wasn't given much of a chance to medal here. Shoot, it was a surprise he made it this far. So with nervous anticipation, those who wanted so much to watch Shanteau live that dream -- including his father, fighting his own battle with lung cancer -- watched as he plunged into the water at the National Aquatics Center for preliminaries of the 200-meter breaststroke on Tuesday night.

He qualified seventh fastest, one of 16 swimmers to make the semifinals.

"That was the dream right there," said Shanteau. "I just had it come true and I think there's a lot more to come. I feel great. Physically, I feel really good. It's a dream come true just to be competing."

But just as quickly as the dream came true, it ended.

Shanteau finished two spots out of qualifying for the final, 10th-fastest among the 16 semifinalists who swam on Wednesday morning. He missed the last spot by .13 seconds -- a minuscule amount of time to me and you, the difference between a good swim and a bad swim to these athletes.

Still, his time of 2 minutes, 10.10 seconds was a personal best.

"As far as my Olympic experience goes, it is everything that I wanted it to be," said Shanteau. "As far as my swimming goes, I accomplished what I came here to do -- get a best time -- and I did that. It's difficult that I don't get to go into the final tomorrow and have a shot at a medal. But I came here to do a best time, and I did it.

"I have no regrets whatsoever."

So as you watch Phelps swim this weekend, looking to accomplish something no one ever has, take a moment to think about 24-year-old Eric Shanteau, who is looking to accomplish something no one should ever have to.

"Now I have a bigger battle," said Shanteau, "and I know I am going to win that one. Now I can put all my energy into it, fighting this battle. I am going to attack it the same way I did swimming, and I'm going to get it the hell out of me."



Copyright 2008 The Sports Network
All rights reserved