Best Olympic Hopeful

The great David-and-Goliath story of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney was the shocking defeat of the world's greatest heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestler, a Russian who hadn't lost a match in thirteen years, by an engaging Wyoming farm boy named Rulon Gardner. The big news this year is that Gardner has been replaced as the USA's number-one heavyweight by Dremiel Byers, a 265-pound Army sergeant stationed at Fort Carson, in Colorado Springs. A former football player from North Carolina, Byers stunned the wrestling world last September by winning a gold medal at the World Championships in Moscow. But that's not good enough: Byers says he's determined to become America's lone heavyweight at Athens in 2004 and win Olympic gold for his beloved grandfather.