Olympic gold medalist thanks fan who spotted dangerous mole on his chest
Australian Olympic swimmer Mack Horton is lucky he's in a line of work that has him exposing his bare chest before large audiences. The 20-year-old got a tip recently that apparently resulted in surgery to remove a dark mole from his chest that may have been cancerous.
"Shout out to the person that emailed the swim team doctor and told me to get my mole checked out," Horton wrote on Instagram with a photo showing bandages on his chest. "Good call. Very good call."
Horton, who won the men's 400-meter freestyle gold medal at Rio in August, didn't specify whether the growth was benign or malignant. Here's another "before" photo showing the troublesome mole, which was larger than its neighbors.
According to Australia's Cancer Council, approximately two in three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer by the time they reach age 70.
Though outside the world of sports, a viewer of HGTV's "Flip or Flop" made a similar life-saving call about a lump on the throat of co-host Tarek El Moussa's neck that proved to be a result of thyroid cancer.
