Military Olympians

Byers falls short of medal round, plans to wrestle again in 2012

BEIJING—Time spent as a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army instilled a no-bull attitude in Greco-Roman wrestler Dremiel Byers.

So when Byers lost a tight match to Sweden's Jalmar Sjoberg on Thursday in the Olympic quarterfinals of the 264-pound weight class at the China Agricultural University Gymnasium, effort trumped excuses.

"If you don't go out there and wrestle—head down, no anthem, no flag," Byers said. "That's the way it is."

Team USA's Dremiel Byers, top, competes with China's Deli Liu in their men's Greco-Roman 120 kilogram qualification match on Thursday, August 14, 2008. Byers won this match but lost his next match at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. (Gannett News Service, Matt Detrich, The Indianapolis Star)

Byers, the 33-year-old former world champion, fell to Sjoberg—18th at the 2007 world championships—3-0, 1-1, 1-1.

Greco-Roman wrestling's new Olympic rules placed Byers in a precarious position to start the final period.

Each wrestler won a previous period in the best-of-three system. There is no cumulative scoring, meaning the winner of the third period advances, no matter how many points were scored earlier.

Rules call for a red or blue ball—matching the color of wrestler singlets—to be pulled from a bag with one minute left in each two-minute period. Each wrestler then gets 30 seconds to lie flat on the mat and avoid being scored on to receive a point for defending.

However, the final point scored in any tied period determines the winner of that period, so it's advantageous to be on bottom last.

Sjoberg won the "ball draw" and did not allow a point to be scored on him in the final 30 seconds to advance—even though Byers scored five points in the match to his two.

This is the first Olympics with those standards.

"If these rules were something that started last week, I'd probably have a whole lot to say about it," Byers said. "But I've won some matches the same way. It's something we know—an occupational hazard, I guess."

Byers beat Ukraine's Oleksandr Chernetskyi, 1-1, 2-1, and China's Deli Liu, 4-0, 1-1, 1-1 to earn the match with Sjoberg.

Byers is pronounced the winner over China's Deli Liu in men's Greco-Roman 120 kilogram qualification match on Thursday, August 14, 2008. Byers lost his next match at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. (Gannett News Service, Matt Detrich, The Indianapolis Star)

In Byers' mind, fight should have trumped fate one match away from semifinals that determined medal contenders.

"I could have brought a whole lot bigger fight—and I'm kicking myself for that," Byers said.

The U.S. Greco-Roman team—the 2007 world team champions—owned a 1-4 match record before Thursday.

The Americans started Thursday 5-1 before Byers was bounced from the tournament.

Brad Vering (184.8-pound class) split two matches and also was eliminated before medal rounds, while Adam Wheeler later won a bronze at 211.2.

"We've had better days in our Greco program, that's for sure," U.S. coach Steve Fraser said.

Fraser agreed that the match could have been determined sooner.

"To win, you can't leave it up to the coin toss, or the ball grab, or whatever you're calling it these days," Fraser said.

Fraser added: "I feel bad for him, because he's good enough to medal at this thing."

Byers indicated he would be back to fight for a spot in the 2012 Olympics in London—at age 37.

"There's a lot more fight in me," he said.

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Bryce Miller is sports editor of The Des Moines Register