For Steve Marianetti, it was the crowning achievement of a wrestling career ... minus the crowning ceremony.

Seconds before, the former NCAA champion from the University of Illinois had qualified for the premier event in his sport, the World Freestyle Championships.

The feat, coming on the heels of his title in the U.S. National Championships earlier this year, emphatically affirmed Marianetti's status as the best in the nation in his weight class.

It was a moment that screamed for pomp and pageantry. A moment for the 1671/2-pound champion to climb onto an awards stand and have a gold medal draped around his neck as the crowd roared its approval.

So, what happened?

"I pretty much stepped off the mat and a guy came up to me and said, 'My name is so and so. I'm with the USOC drug testing. I have to stay with you the whole time,' " Marianetti said, recalling last month's U.S. World Team Trials.

So much for basking in his moment of triumph.

Oh, Marianetti and the seven other weight-class winners did get to have a group picture taken before they were whisked off the floor at Young Arena in Waterloo, Iowa. But that was about as close as the champions got to a celebratory scene.

"I'm still pouring with sweat, elated, and here I am in a drug-testing room with all the finalists," Marianetti said. "So we have eight real happy guys and eight real depressed guys.

"Typically, with the awards ceremony, you really get that closure of the tournament. There you are, standing on the awards stand. They give you that medal. You know it's over.

"There was never that sense of closure."

In a way, though, perhaps that's all for the best in Marianetti's case. The three-time All-American is the first to admit that true closure to the 1998 season still is two months away, when he competes for the first time in the World Freestyle Championships.

"In college, you win a national championship and it's over," Marianetti said. "That is the season; that is your goal. Here, I win a national championships and it's a qualifier."

"That's what everyone at this level is trying to do: get a shot at the World Championships."

Before Marianetti heads to Tehran, Iran, for the 33rd World Freestyle Championships in September, he'll have one last tuneup. That is, if you can call taking on Russia's Bouvaisar Saitiev a tuneup. Saitiev is merely the defending Olympic champion and a two-time World Championships winner.

He's one of the wrestlers who awaits Marianetti when Team USA competes in the 1998 Goodwill Games in New York. Turkey and Iran round out the four-team wrestling competition July 25-26 at Madison Square Garden. Marianetti's opponent from Turkey is expected to be 1996 World University Games champion Nuri Zengen.

"So I will have my hands full," Marianetti said.

Not that Marianetti is conceding anything. And with good reason. It has been a breakthrough year of breathtaking proportions for the 26-year-old. In 1998, Marianetti has won 14 of 16 matches, finished first in three major tournaments – the Pan American Championships, U.S. nationals and World Team Trials – and placed second by the margin of one point in the Kiev (Ukraine) Grand Prix.

"I see myself going into the World Championships knowing that anything can happen," Marianetti said. "I can win the World Championships if I have a great day."

He'll get no argument from Bruce Burnett, who has been U.S. freestyle coach since 1992.

"Physically, he's very strong," Burnett said. "His counter-offense and takedown abilities are as good as anybody in the world."

The leap Marianetti still must make, Burnett said, is in mastering all the nuances of freestyle wrestling. In that regard, the former Illini is hardly alone. It's an adjustment all U.S. wrestlers – who, unlike most of the rest of the world, have grown up wrestling under folkstyle rules – must make.

"There's a learning period there," Burnett said, "and he's gotten better, but he's got a lot of ground to cover. It's a continual process, but I think he's a little cut above in being able to learn and listen."

The distinction between freestyle and folkstyle is most apparent when both wrestlers are down on the mat. There, the techniques and strategies are different enough that Marianetti's lack of experience in freestyle still shows.

"I'm doing very well on my feet, well enough to win a national title," Marianetti said, "yet I have a whole other side of freestyle wrestling where I'm almost a beginner.

"In the nationals and World Team Trials, I had zero turns against top opponents. Once I start turning guys (going for the pin), it's going to take me to a whole level higher, and I think I'll really start distancing myself."

Speaking of distance, Marianetti's emergence on the postcollegiate wrestling scene has led to some mighty long jaunts from home. Besides the Ukraine, the third-year Illini assistant coach has traveled to Turkey and Russia in the last two years.

The latter trip was for the 1997 World Championships, where Marianetti was an alternate member on the U.S. team that placed sixth. For the Northbrook native, the trip was memorable for at least a couple of reasons: the exhausting total of 36 hours it took to return to Champaign-Urbana and the frustration he felt about being a spectator only.

"You're sitting in the seats, and you're in great shape, and your wrestling has never been better, and you feel sharp and strong, and it's all for nothing," Marianetti said. "So obviously that just ate me up inside."

Ate him up enough that Marianetti vowed he would do all in his power to make sure he wasn't in the stands again when the 1998 World Championships arrived.

Now that he's made good on that vow, Marianetti has made another: to make the best of this chance.

"There's probably seven other guys at my weight class that have the ability to be No. 1 in the country," he said. "Every year it's going to be a dogfight to make that (U.S.) team, so I have to maximize my opportunity here."

If he does, Marianetti can only hope the drug-testers will be a little more patient this time.