When he was eight years old, Peter Egan's mother told him that it was time he got out of the house and got involved in something.

"It was between hockey and swimming," remembers began

His decision wasn't a hard one though, after a classmate told him that, to play hockey, you had to get up at five-thirty on Saturday mornings.

Swimming the butterfly back and forth across Blodgett Pool as the sun rises all winter makes Egan laugh at the irony of the decision he made over 10 years ago.

"If I had known how many Saturday mornings I'd be up early, I might have never chosen swimming."

For eight-year-old Egan, swimming was just a fun way to spend his afternoons.

"It just started out as three times a week," he says. "You go in for an hour, you have a nice time, you meet some people, and it was all right--and then, I got good."

Get good he did. By age 10, Egan was traveling across the country from his home in Kansas City to swim against high-caliber competition.

"I never thought of my parents as pushing me," he says. "Maybe people outside the family might have seen it that way, but my parents were always willing to take me to workouts or meets."

Egan's parents were always at this side--flying with him to meets as far off as California and Ohio.

Despite the excellence Egan achieved as a youngster, he never was bothered by the increasing pressure surrounding his performances.

"I loved going to meets like that," he recalls. "When you're 10, you don't sit down and think, gee this is a big meet... you just get excited about it and go fast---it was great."

As he grew older-and faster began found the tensions of swimming grew.

A standout at Pembroke Country Day School in Kansas City, Egan went to the Missouri state high school meet as a favorite in the butterfly.

"I told everybody I was going to win," he recollects. "I had some friends who had driven all the way to see me and they expected me to win--but when I got up on the blocks, I just felt so pressurized."