"It's Jack."

Before she answered the phone at Santa Fe Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation, Inc., a business she owns and operates out of El Gancho Fitness, Swim & Racquet Club in Santa Fe, Julie Endreson knew the call had the potential to be life-changing.

"When he called, I had to look at the clock because I knew you would ask," Endreson says.

It was 1:15 p.m.

It was the 29th day of October, 2007.

It was Jack Ransome, the medical coordinator for USA Track & Field, the man in charge for selecting the medical staff for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Endreson knew the content of the call. What she waited to hear was the confirmation.

Ransome didn't delay the drama.

"I was so excited, I could barely speak," Endreson says.

Endreson, who began working with the country's elite athletes in the late 1980s, was going to her first Olympics. There was one catch.

"I couldn't tell anybody," Endreson says.

Not through the month of November.

Not through early December.

Not until the annual USA Track & Field meeting concluded.

"There was one final, formal blessing that had to happen," Endreson says of the committee's stamp of approval.

So, she waited. But with the meeting underway, Endreson took the proactive approach. She e-mailed Ransome, asking about "you know what." His replay was all of six words.

"Pack your bags. You are golden."

"It's the peak of my career," Endreson says. "It is the dream come true. For it to finally happen, it's just really amazing. I'm all butterflies."

Still.

Endreson leaves the 28th. She is part of the first wave that will land in Dalian, China, the pre-Olympics home for the USA Track & Field team.

"That's where our training camp will be," Endreson says. "It's about an hour flight away from Beijing."

The Olympics begin Aug. 8. The track competition starts seven day later. The medical staff will accompany the athletes to Beijing. Once there ...

"I don't know," Endreson says. "I've never worked the Olympics before."

She laughs at her answer.

Endreson, though, was in Osaka, Japan for the 2007 IAAF World Championships in Athletics. A year earlier, she was in Moscow for the IAAF World Indoor Championships.

She has experience.

And expertise.

And a passport stamp from China, one from the early 1990s.

"I was there with the softball team," Endreson says. "It's a different place now, but I had strong feelings then about China being a host for the Olympics."

Everyone has an opinion on Beijing as host. Pollution tops most discussions.

"We've been told that they've shut down some factories and cut down the amount of cars on the road as of July 1," Endreson says. "We're taking carbon-filter masks for anyone who needs it on our team."

Her first visit to the Forbidden Kingdom wasn't all work.

"We went to the Wall," Endreson says of the rare day off. "To sit and stand on the Wall, and see it snake on and on through the hills, it was one of the most remarkable things I've ever done. I hope to see it again. That would be wonderful."

Work, though, comes first.

That's why Endreson traveled to the U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene. She went as a volunteer.

"We all go to the Olympic Trails to volunteer," Endreson says. "Everybody wants to work with elite athletes. Plus, it was on my home turf. I'm a Duck."

The University of Oregon was the host to the week-long competition.

"That was quite a fun experience," Endreson says. "I saw some old friends that I first met in 1999. It was really great to reconnect with staff and some of the athletes."

It isn't just the athletes who have been training. Endreson switched her regiment from cardio-heavy, to weights and core work.

"This is going to be a huge endurance event for me," Endreson says.

It's been a long time coming. The wait, though, will be worth it.

At least, it was for Ransome.

"It is an honor to be picked again," Ransome says of his selection in a Texas State University-San Marcos news release. "Athens was the experience of a lifetime, and now I get the chance to do it again.

"Working the Olympics is amazing not only because you get to travel around the world, but also because you get to interact with exceptional athletes and coaches. Being able to perform on that big of a stage is a life-changing experience."

It doesn't happen to everyone.

There are 18,000 athletic trainers who are part of the selection process over a four-year period. Sixty are selected to work either the World University Games or the Pan American Games. Out of that pool, the top 30 receive invitations to staff the Olympics.

"The Olympics reminds us of what we can be, how we can be our best and push the limits of what we can accomplish," Endreson says. "It's a blueprint of world peace, of the amazing things that human beings can do.

"To be part of this, that's what thrills me the most."