Matthew Sercombe has been training for more than two decades for an opportunity like this. He’s battled through intense heat, grueling 12-hour-plus days and high-pressure situations to become one of the best among his peers. So when he was asked to represent the United States at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China, the 39-year-old Charles Village resident jumped at the chance.

Sercombe, the food production manager at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, is one of 125 chefs nationwide to be selected by his employer, Aramark, to join 7,000 total Aramark staff members who will be charged with the task of feeding up to 6,000 athletes, coaches, staff and media at a time at the Olympics.

“When I found out, I was stunned. I was really excited,” said Sercombe. “Then it set in that I was going to China and I was like ‘Oh Lord.’”

He leaves for China Wednesday and his last day is Sept. 30. The Olympic Games are Aug. 8-24.

Though he is an accomplished chef, Sercombe won’t actually be cooking any food. He’ll be overseeing the Chinese employers and making sure the food preparation process is safe, clean, fast and efficient. Aramark will provide a rotating eight-day menu of over 800 recipes — from traditional Chinese food to cuisine from throughout the world — to make sure there’s something for everyone, including finely-tuned local Olympic athletes like Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff.

Would Sercombe take credit if his cuisine helped Phelps break Mark Spitz’s world record of seven gold medals in a Olympics?

“I’d probably try to get bragging rights,” Sercombe said. “I’d tell the world it was my food that made it happen.”

Sercombe, who has been cooking since he was 16, cooked at a restaurant in Seattle to pay for college. He enjoyed it so much, he decided to drop out and go to culinary school, eventually becoming a chef in the Seattle area.

He and his wife, Theresa Terry, relocated to Baltimore in 2003 when she was transferred by her employer. He took a job as the executive chef at Kooper’s Tavern in Fells Point before serving in the same capacity at Slainte and Woody’s, both also in Fells Point.

When his hectic work schedule and odd hours kept him from seeing his wife as much as he’d like, Sercombe decided to take a position with more stable hours at Aramark in 2005.

A fellow Aramark chef who went to three past Olympics sparked him to apply, and after a lengthy application process that included phone interviews with officials in China, Sercombe received an e-mail from Aramark in February confirming he was headed to China. He had a brief moment of panic — he’ll be away from his wife for three months and he’s never been overseas — before his anxiety quickly turned into excitement and anticipation.

“It’s three months in a foreign country and I’ll be away from wife and friends,” he said. “It’s a big hurdle to overcome, but the experience I will gain from it will be even greater.”

Terry encouraged her husband to go when the “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity presented itself. “I’ll miss him dreadfully, but how do you pass up a chance to go to China?” she said.

The couple plans to stay in touch via an audio-video webcam service, and when his time in China comes to an end, the two will meet up in Bangkok, Thailand, for a week-long vacation together. Terry got to choose the destination, a place she had wanted to visit for a long time.

“I am jealous, actually. He got to go to China for three months, and I got to pick where we go on vacation for a week,” she joked.

Sercombe said he only knows enough Chinese to find the bathroom. He is using the book “Chinese for Dummies” in a mad rush to learn the language before he gets to Beijing. During his stay, he will be living in apartment with other Aramark chefs from the United States.

When he’s off the clock, he hopes to take in the Chinese culture and Olympic atmosphere as much as possible and watch basketball and soccer games.

And if a rash of freak injuries swept through the U.S. team, Sercombe said he’d be ready to step up and help out the red, white and blue if his country needed him. “I hope not, because America would not do very well,” he said with a laugh. “I hope I’d do alright in basketball because I’m 6-foot-3. Other than that, I’m not very athletic.”

Matt Vensel is a content creator at b. E-mail him at matt@bthesite.com

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