BOYNTON BEACH, Fla.-U.S. Olympic athletes in Atlanta communicated with their coaches, teammates, friends, family and press using OlymPagers, alphanumeric pagers that Motorola Inc. provided to each Team USA athlete.
The pagers were unexpectedly beneficial for athletes needing to communicate with family and with one another after the bombing in Olympic Square last month.
“It’s very important for all of us athletes to have pagers, especially since there are no family or coaches allowed in the Olympic Village,” said Matt Ghaffari, who won a silver medal in Greco-Roman wrestling.
Athletes said the pagers have been a great way to receive game schedule updates as well as messages and congratulations from family and friends.
Motorola’s North American Paging Subscriber Division supplied the OlymPagers.
Motorola had provided the swim team a WordTrek Plus, which allows one message to transmit to a large group of pagers. “After the unfortunate bombing incident, we used the WordTrek to page all of the swimmers to locate them and make sure they were all right,” said Susan Teeter-Eggert, a USA swim team leader. “We were able to get in touch with all 63 members of the swim team in just over an hour.”
