Marcie Van Dusen is fun. She is the Official Live Wire of the U.S. women’s Olympic wrestling team.

And probably its best hope for a medal here at Beijing, too.

This is the journalism part of the Olympics. When you go talk to athletes you know and write about them. And the “where” doesn’t matter as much as the “what they said.”

Van Dusen, an alumnus of Lake Arrowhead’s Rim of the World High School, competes in the same weight class (121.5 pounds) as Japanese star Saori Yoshida, who has lost only once in her career.

To Van Dusen, in January. Yoshida cried.

Van Dusen went almost Hulk Hogan when asked about Yoshida at a press conference today. But she did it in a light-hearted way that gave the moment humor, not bombast.

“I heard she wants a rematch,” Van Dusen said. “I thought I would come back and give her one.

“She had 119 matches without a loss and I couldn’t let her keep that up. I’m ready to go with a rematch.

“Let’s do it again, Yoshida!”

I don’t know women’s wrestling from mixed badminton, but I’m already looking forward to a potential Yoshida-Van Dusen gold-medal match.

Van Dusen competes on Saturday, Aug. 16. If she can win four consecutive matches, she would have a gold medal.

Sports Illustrated predicts she will finish with the silver. Behind Yoshida.

Van Dusen doesn’t expect it to go down that way. Actually, the four women on the U.S. wrestling team predict they will leave Beijing with … four gold medals.

“For me, it wouldn’t be an upset,” Van Dusen said, referring to a victory over Yoshida and a gold medal. “For the world it would be.”

Van Dusen went over some topics familiar to those who have followed her career.

“I started when I was 8,” she said. “My brother beat me up a lot. He would come home from wrestling practice (at Rim of the World) and beat me up.

“I learned to fight back … but he still beats me up, and he’s 32. I go home and he gives me a hug … and then it’s a headlock and I’m down on the ground. I’m waiting. I’m going to get him some day. He has to get a little older and fatter first.”

She concedes her brother’s love for wrestling engendered her own, but she can’t always give him complete credit. “He’s such a pain in the butt. He calls me at 7 in the morning and says, ‘You should be out there running.’”

Van Dusen followed T.J. to wrestling practice and, at age 12, was working with Dave Chapman — father of Rim state champion Scott Chapman.

Asked how important the Olympics are to her, Van Dusen said, “That’s funny, because I was asked that after the (U.S. Olympic) trials. And I said I remember being, like, 12 and my coach (Chapman) asked me, ‘Do you want to wrestle in the world championships some day?’ And I was like, ‘Is it in the Olympics? I’d rather do that.’ He was like, ‘Not yet, but it will be some day.’

“He told me it would and I believed everything he said.”

Van Dusen said 13 family members and friends will be in Beijing in time to see her wrestle next weekend, including her parents, Tom and Cindy. And brother T.J., who may be able to pin her — even if Saori Yoshida cannot.