Australia’s elite swimmers will hunt for gold at next month’s Paris Olympics, after years of training that has put them at a heightened risk of developing melanoma — a potentially deadly form of skin cancer.
Reigning world 400m freestyle champion Sam Short, who is competing in this week’s Olympic swimming trials in Brisbane, was still a teenager when a melanoma on his back was diagnosed in 2022.
The 20-year-old, who grew up heavily involved in surf lifesaving, joins other champion swimmers Cate Campbell, Julie McDonald and Susie Maroney, who are all known to have had melanomas removed.
Campbell, 32 — who is also competing in this week’s Olympic trials — was diagnosed mid-career with a melanoma on her upper right arm in 2018.
Diving into the data
In the wake of so many high-profile swimmers developing melanomas, Swimming Australia approached the University of Queensland (UQ) to assess the athletes’ skin cancer risk.
The results have prompted a respected dermatologist to call for all major pools in south-east Queensland — and the spectator areas — to be shaded by the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, in hopes the global sporting event will become the “sun-safe Games”.
In a pilot study, UQ researchers assessed 44 Queensland-based elite swimmers and 23 of their support staff, including coaches. Three of the athletes reported a previous history of melanoma.
All 67 participants had a skin check by a dermatologist and completed a survey between December last year and February this year.
Dermatologist H. Peter Soyer, one of the lead researchers, said 15 to 20 per cent of the swimmers were at high risk of developing skin cancer, particularly melanoma, earlier in life.
“Quite a few had multiple moles, which can be precursor lesions or sometimes the start of a melanoma,” Professor Soyer said.
More than half had fair or very fair skin, most had never had a skin check by a general practitioner, and at least a quarter had a first-degree relative who had been diagnosed with melanoma.
As an adult, six in 10 swimmers — 27 of them — and 96 per cent of support staff had experienced one or more severe sunburns, where the skin was sore for at least two days, or the skin peeled.
Seven athletes — or 16 per cent — reported being severely sunburnt 50 or more times in adulthood.
The median age of the athlete participants was 22, with ages ranging from 17 to 31.
Testing the waters in Olympics lead-up
Co-researcher Monika Janda, director of UQ’s Centre for Health Services Research, said many of the swimmers had “quite strong tan lines” from sun exposure.
“They were aware they had quite a bit of sun damage already,” Professor Janda said.
“Depending on the skin cancer, between 80 and 90 per cent of the risk is implicated by sun exposure. Being out and about in the sun a lot definitely increases the risk of these swimmers.
“Quite a few of the swimmers had actually developed sunburns in the past and sometimes several per year, which means that obviously more can be done to protect them in the future.”
The researchers hope to expand their study into a three-to-five-year project to follow the nation’s elite swimmers leading into the Brisbane Games in eight years.
They hope to take saliva swabs to gauge genetic risk of melanoma and perform 3D whole-body imaging of the athletes over time to detect whether their moles are changing.
Artificial intelligence will also be harnessed to “tell us if the mole is suspicious”.
Pools need to have shade
Professor Janda said Skin Cancer Prevention Queensland — a collaboration between government, universities, and not-for-profit organisations — had set targets to reduce the state’s skin cancer burden by 5 per cent in 2030 and 25 per cent by 2050.
As the Brisbane Olympics loom, Professor Soyer says government action is needed to ensure major outdoor swimming pools have shade sails in time for the Games.
“When the world is looking at us, I think at our major pools we should have shade,” he said.
“It just needs to be a decision from the government, particularly the Queensland government, to show the world that we take sun awareness seriously.”
Professor Soyer hopes by highlighting the skin cancer risk in elite athletes, it will encourage them to be more sun safe and, in the process, improve sun safety in the young people who idolise them.
Australian of the Year Georgina Long, the co-medical director at the Melanoma Institute of Australia in Sydney, said Australia needed to champion sun safety in the same way as helmets in cycling and safety jackets in water sports.
The institute was involved in developing the Australian Institute of Sport’s sun safe position statement, launched in 2022.
“We’re calling on sporting bodies to look at the risks to their athletes, to their spectators and to the officials all involved in their sport,” Professor Long said.
“We need to understand the risks and we need to do something about it together as a team. I really want to make it a team thing, not a blame game. Blame game doesn’t work.”
The Melanoma Institute of Australia estimates that 16,800 Australians will be diagnosed with melanoma and 1,300 will die of the cancer in 2024.
Fortunately, Short, Campbell, McDonald and Maroney were diagnosed with melanomas that were able to be surgically removed before they had the chance to spread throughout their bodies.
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