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Computer maker Gateway Inc. this year is continuing the sponsorship of the U.S. Olympic team that it began in 1999, not only at the Athens games but over the months leading to the event as well.
For the Poway, Calif., company, the sponsorship is a two-pronged effort. First, there is the ongoing work it does with the Olympic team at the three training centers in Colorado Springs, Colo.; Lake Placid, N.Y.; and Chula Vista, Calif. Gateway provides all front-end and back-end support, from servers, storage and desktops to notebooks and tablets, said Greg Seremetis, director of product marketing and the person in charge of the companys work with the Olympic team.
Gateway also outfits U.S. Olympic offices in Washington and New York with technology, from servers to desktops to laptops.
“We work day-in, day-out with the USOT,” Seremetis said.
Over the past 18 months, mobility has become a driving force in the technology used at the training sites and a key difference from when Gateway was providing technology for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Seremetis said. Such capabilities, including Wi-Fi support in Intel Corp.s Mobile Pentium 4 and Pentium M chips, have become keys to making technology useful in training.
In a recent session, gold medal swimmer Ed Moses was filmed underwater while training, Seremetis said. Immediately afterward, Moses and the trainers were able to load the video onto a laptop, analyze it and compare it with other videos of Moses and his competitors. “Then hes back in the water ready to change his stroke,” Seremetis said. “It really puts technology into the athletes training.”
Gateway also will be outfitting many of the U.S. Olympic venues during the Summer Olympics in Athens. Seremetis estimated that between 1,500 and 2,000 Gateway units—servers, PCs, laptops, storage devices and tablets—will be hooked up in Athens.
Some will be used at the Athlete Processing Center and High Performance Center at the American College of Greece, Seremetis said. The U.S. athletes will go to the facility for processing—including accreditation, uniforms and schedules, he said.
In addition, there will be two Gateway Green Rooms—one at the USA House and the other at a site hosted by Bank of America Corp. called Hometown Hopefuls—in central Athens, where athletes will be able to do things such as send and receive e-mail. The Green Rooms will have wireless Intel hot spots installed as well.