FORT CARSON, Colo. - World heavyweight Greco-Roman champion Sgt. Dremiel Byers loves nothing more than hearing the "The Star-Spangled Banner" play while standing atop podiums of international wrestling tournaments.

Last year, the Army World Class Athlete most proudly beamed from atop the podium in Moscow, Russia, where Byers captured a gold medal as the first African-American and fourth member of Team USA ever to win a Greco-Roman crown at the World Wrestling Championships.

"The whole year in itself led up to it," Byers, 28, said of the best wrestling run of his life. "A lot of things changed in my wrestling, and I accidentally got in shape. Rulon Gardner's accident left the door open for me to get a whole lot more matches in. I had more world tours and had a great opportunity to see what was out there."

Along the way, Byers kept landing atop podiums.

"I was doing well at these tournaments," he said. "I was either in the finals or placing higher than anybody else who traveled with me. Things started working out and I started really paying attention.

"I stole a few moves from some little guys around the world, and by the time I showed up at the world championships, there was nothing there I hadn't already seen," Byers continued. "I was just in my zone. I had my coach with me. I had Spec. [Jason] Loukides with me. I had my workout partner and future star of the Army program, [Spc.] Paul Devlin, with me.

"We had the winning team, support-wise, and everything just clicked. Once the wrestling started, each match I was totally in the zone and ready to go. Whenever someone would happen to score a point, it didn't matter because I knew there were too many areas for me to get it back. I got it back, and we got our song played at the end."

For his efforts, Byers earned 2002 U.S. Army Male Athlete of the Year honors and received similar awards from USA Wrestling and the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Byers defeated Hungary's Mihaly Deak-Bardos, 4-0, in the 264.5-pound finale of the 2002 World Wrestling Championships.

"Finally," Byers thought as he climbed atop the podium. "Everything I'd been hearing about my wrestling ability and all this potential people see in me, maybe they were right. I really believe that it was something great that happened on the way to something better."

By that, Byers means a trip to Athens, Greece, for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games.

"It's great that it happened, but the big picture is we have to get an Olympic medal in this room," he said of the Army World Class Athlete Program's wrestling facility at Fort Carson. "And that's what we're doing. We have to bring that back. That's why we do this: for the Olympic team.

"It's nice to be a world champion and no matter what, I'm still under the shadow of better wrestlers than me. As far as the world, I guess they think the United States is solid in that weight class because we have two guys who can get it done."

Despite being a wrestling pioneer, Byers doesn't feel like Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson or Gale Sayers.

"When my barber tells that to a little kid and he looks up to me, that's when it's special," Byers says of breaking a racial barrier.

"I have to keep getting better, and that's why I have the right coach in [Staff Sgt.] Shon Lewis. We've been together so long trying for this and finally we see it. We know what we have to do to get there again. We have other guys in the room who can get there, and we want them to see it. We want to get this program back to what it was, pounding you in every weight class."

Byers wants to give back to WCAP.

"It is so special and different," he said. "You can hold somebody accountable in the Army for failure at their job. If you trained them and they do not succeed at their job, you can hold them accountable. But it's hard to just go out and find somebody and say: 'Hey, go out and be number one in the world.'

"This is one of those places where you have to look at a diamond in the rough, but still you're a soldier first. You can't take that from a man."

Any wrestler would be hard-pressed to find a better place to land than WCAP.

"This program means everything to me," Byers concluded. "It gave me another home, gave me another family - just everything. Who would believe my life? I go around the world and have my own little personal combats with every country. It's such an honor, and I'm so proud of that."

Byers and teammate Pfc. Tina George, who won a women's silver medal in the 2002 World Championships, are the only soldiers ever to win medals at that level. Spc. Rodney Smith struck bronze in the 1992 Summer Games, the lone Olympic medal belonging to this Army wrestling family that resides in the Rockies.

"If I get caught up in it, I think I'll fall off the equator," Byers said. "I'm still in the shadows. As great an athlete as Rulon is, I think his medals are a little golder than mine. They're a little heavier. And I have to get some more.

"I promised my grandfather an Olympic medal. I can hold him over with a world medal or maybe another Pan-American Games medal, but he wants the Olympic medal, and that's what I'm going to get him."

Grandfather Theodore Byers lives in Kings Mountain, N.C., where Dremiel's roots of perseverance run deep into Tar Heel country.

"I've been through a lot," Dremiel recalls. "I started looking back and seeing all the times when I probably should've crumbled and I didn't, and I think that helped me a little bit. Not only the mental toughness, I've lived to focus more on wrestling. I went through a divorce, went to school, almost died of meningitis [hospitalized for eight days]. Every time it seemed like something should have been enough to make me fall off, I've gotten stronger.

"Then I allowed myself to focus on military career and wrestling, military career and wrestling," Byers said of his recent turnaround. "Sometimes I just run, or run with my dogs, just to clear my mind. And I grew that extra lung I've been looking for so many years."

Inspired by his grandfather, Byers credits the Army World Class Athlete Program for his uncanny drive.

"There aren't too many things out there that gives you the opportunity to pursue your dreams like this," he said. "The Army does that, for sure, but this program is doing so much for me and the other athletes. We appreciate this opportunity, and overall we know the least we can do is win, and win well."

During the past year, Byers has won at the U.S. Nationals, Dave Schultz Memorial International tournament, World Team Trials, World Championships and he recently helped Team USA to its inaugural upset of Cuba's national team.

The Army Athlete of the Year award, he insists, is just as important.

"Coach Lewis got that award years ago and I've always wanted it," he said. "Always, always, always. I was at [Primary Leadership Development Course] when they told me [that I got it], and I was just so happy.

"Even that poster," Byers points to a 2003 All-Army Sports calendar on the wall with a photo of himself wrestling Gardner. "Lieutenant Jerry Jackson had an All-Army poster when I first came in and I've always wanted one. Now I've got one."