Two months after bringing home the gold in the Winter Olympics, Buffalo bobsledder Steve Mesler stood Wednesday in the East Room of the White House and heard a man’s voice calling.

“Hey, it’s the bobsled team!” cried the voice, from 40 feet away. Turning and looking toward who was calling him, Mesler saw President Obama.

That was just one of the highlights of Mesler’s third White House visit as an Olympian … and his first as a gold-medal winner.

Mesler and Hamburg aerial skier Matt DePeters were among about 300 U.S. Olympians and Paralympians invited to the White House for a few words of congratulations and pictures with the president, the first lady and the vice president.

“Definitely the highlight was meeting President Obama,” DePeters said. “He was a really nice guy. He shook everybody’s hand, and chatted us up about our sport.”

Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller, who starred for the U.S. Olympic hockey team, couldn’t make it because of a previous engagement at TD Garden in Boston … the fourth game of the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

But Bill Burton, a Buffalo native who serves as deputy press secretary for Obama, said Miller sent the president an autographed hockey puck.

Mesler had been to the White House before, as a member of the 2002 and 2006 U.S. Olympic teams, but this visit was unusually memorable, he said in an interview after the event.

For one thing, while President George W. Bush only posed for group pictures with the entire U.S. Olympic team, Obama happily gripped and grinned separately with the bobsledders, the skiers, the skaters. “It was a much more intimate event,” Mesler said. “He was very gracious with his time.”

So were Vice President Biden, who also made the rounds visiting with the Olympians, and first lady Michelle Obama.

“The first lady gave everybody on our team a hug and said thank you,” Mesler said. “She said how proud she was of all of us.”

Reacting to it all later, DePeters said: “I was a little star-struck.”

The visit was undoubtedly special for all the Olympians and Paralympians, but it was especially meaningful for Mesler for several reasons.

For one, “I’m a big supporter of the administration and everything they’re doing,” he said.

For another, he played soccer at City Honors School with Burton, who led Mesler on a private tour of the West Wing … including the Oval Office.

“It was great to be with Steve in the White House where my colleagues treated him like he was the very big deal that he is,” Burton said later. “Looking forward to watching the Sabres game with him tonight, but finding a place in D.C. where it is going to be on while a Capitals game is going on is proving to be a bit of a challenge.”

Mesler and his teammates had some other business to tend to first: a reception at the Supreme Court.

In two days, Mesler visited all three branches of government. Tuesday, Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb., led the bobsledding team on a tour of the Capitol … including a walk along the inside of the dome.

However, Mesler said he savored his trip to the White House above all … and for the reason that any 31-year-old athlete would savor it.

“It’s my third trip there,” he said, “and as I was looking around, I thought: This is probably the last time I will ever walk in here.”