Buffalo Boy's Blog

No matter what this kid does over the next 6 weeks or so, he deserves an Olympic medal just for getting this far. Eric Shanteau will be the biggest story of the Olympics hands down, and if he does anything significant, he may well get sportsman of the year for his bravery of doing what he is doing.

A week before Olympic Trials he discovered that he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. That news in and of itself would be enough to get most of us to quit doing what ever it is we were doing and focus on getting ourselves cured.

Eric on the other hand acknowledging the risk hes taking, realized that he won't get this opportunity again and chances are he thought he wouldn't even make the games. So he swam trials.

Instead of having surgery, he made the Olympics in the 200 meter breaststroke. He never expected that and now he will get blood work done every two weeks through the Olympics to insure that nothing abnormal is going on with the cancer and that it isn't spreading. If it is, hes done.

Irregardless of what happens, if he swims or doesn't he deserves a medal for even going to trials and then deciding to take a shot at the games. If he ends up being able to swim, this whole country and for that matter, the world will be on his side. Yet another reason to watch as this US swim team gets ready for the 2008 games.