COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – The phone rang in my office at USA Wrestling and the caller got right to the point.

“Yes, Craig, this is Lindsey Durlacher, I’m a Greco-Roman wrestler for Team USA.”

I had been on the job at USA Wrestling for just over a month, but I was well aware of who I was talking to.

I had watched Durlacher during his All-American career at the University of Illinois. I was there when he made his first World Team in 2005. I had seen him win the U.S. Open in Las Vegas in April 2006, just a few days before his call.

“I just won the U.S. Open and I’m getting absolutely no media attention,” Durlacher continued. “This is ridiculous. I need you to help me get some publicity, and get the word out about me. Nobody knows about me. Nobody.”

Durlacher did most of the talking during that conversation, but he did ask me how he could get his name out there where the media would take notice.

I simply stated the obvious.

“Go out and win a World medal,” I told him.

“Oh, I’m going to do that. You just watch,” he said.

That was my introduction to Lindsey Durlacher. He stood only 5-foot-3, but he was full of piss and vinegar.

He wouldn’t back down from anybody. He was cocky, brash, in-your-face and not always politically correct. He often did his speaking before his thinking. What you saw was what you got.

He attacked his wrestling opponents with the same ferocity. He was fearless, tenacious and hard-nosed. One of the toughest and grittiest competitors I’ve ever seen.

Over the next three years, we worked closely together as the media did take notice while Durlacher started to excel internationally at 55 kg/121 lbs.

A few months after our chat, he was standing on the podium after winning a bronze medal at the 2006 World Championships in Guangzhou, China.

A year later, he delivered a key fifth-place finish that helped the U.S. win the team title at the 2007 World Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan. It was the first and only World title won by the U.S. in Greco-Roman wrestling.

During that time, we developed an excellent working relationship. Lindsey was great with the media and easy to work with. He was articulate, enthusiastic and entertaining. He would do anything we asked him to do during the media crush leading up to the 2008 Olympic Games. He appeared at the U.S. Olympic Media Summit in Chicago in the spring of 2008.

Just over five years after we first spoke on the phone, I received another phone call about Lindsey Durlacher. I was standing in my kitchen early Saturday afternoon when my boss, Gary Abbott, called to inform me that Durlacher had died.

“What?” I called out in disbelief.

I couldn’t believe it. Lindsey was just 36 years old. I had just talked to him a few months before when he stopped by to give me a hard time while I covered the Dave Schultz Memorial International in February at the U.S. Olympic Training Center.

I am sitting in my office as I write this, looking up on the wall at the team photo that appeared on the cover of USA Wrestler magazine in December 2007. A smiling Durlacher is in the front row, sporting a black eye, while posing with the other six members of the World championship team.

The photo actually was taken with Durlacher’s camera. The photographer we had at the event had some problems with his camera. Luckily, Durlacher handed me his camera and I snapped the photo that we used on the magazine cover.

Durlacher turned in a gutsy performance in 2007. He lost to World champion Hamid Sourian of Iran, but came back to win two huge matches to secure a top-five finish. Those wins were critical as the U.S. defeated Russia by one point for the team title. His finish also qualified the weight class for the Olympics. The pressure in those matches was enormous, with so much at stake, and Durlacher came through.

During the finals, Cuba’s Mijain Lopez needed to beat Russia’s Khassan Baroev in the final match of the night at heavyweight to give the U.S. the team title.

I stood next to Durlacher and American T.C. Dantzler as the match neared its conclusion. I remember Durlacher chanting, “Kooba-Kooba” as Cuba’s Lopez finished off the win.

As Lopez walked off the stage, U.S. wrestlers ran over to congratulate the massive Cuban. Durlacher jumped into Lopez’s arms and Lopez carried Durlacher around like he was holding a child.

It was an amazing scene. I will never forget it.

Durlacher was a guy who gave plenty back to the sport. I wrote a short story on him in 2007 when he went back to the Chicago area where he grew up and gave an inspirational speech to a group of seventh-graders.

He gave back to the sport as a coach in recent years. He was a guy who always was very passionate about a sport that he loved.

He gave me plenty of grief for wearing my Iowa Hawkeyes polo shirt. Durlacher was upset by Iowa’s Jessie Whitmer in the 1997 NCAA finals at 118 pounds.

Durlacher told me in 2008 that if he would have won that match against Whitmer he may not have wrestled internationally. He said he may have hung up his singlet at that point because he would have accomplished his goal of becoming an NCAA champion.

That loss drove Durlacher at the international level. He was on the U.S. National Team for eight straight years from 2002 to 2010.

The day Durlacher won his World bronze medal in 2006, his teammate and close friend, Joe Warren, won a World title in the weight class above his. I was interviewing Warren the day after he won and Durlacher approached.

“Oh, so the only medal you care about is gold,” Durlacher told me as he flashed a smile while wrestling around with Warren. “Joe’s just lucky I wasn’t in his weight class. I would’ve whipped him.”

Back in May 2008, Olympics writer John Meyer of the Denver Post ventured down here to do a story about the athletes who work out at the Incline in Manitou Springs.

Meyer was already here, interviewing athletes early on a Saturday morning, when Durlacher walked up the hill.

“I don’t suppose you want to interview a World medalist,” Durlacher called out so everyone could hear him.

The group of young wrestlers all broke up laughing, shaking their heads.

There was never a dull moment when Lindsey Durlacher was around.

And he certainly gave us plenty of moments to remember him by.

He will be missed.