Going full blast after shaky start

The Huntsman World Senior Games are gearing up for their 20th anniversary this year in St. George with a record 10,000-plus senior athletes registered for the competition that starts tomorrow and runs through Oct. 21.

And you thought it was hard getting seated for the early bird special before now.

Few ideas have hit the ground running and then kept on running like the Huntsman Games.

It all got started innocently enough back in 1987 when John H. Morgan, a local St. George sports nut barely into his 60s and with plenty of time to recreate on his hands, decided he'd like to compete against people just like him and organized what was first called the World Senior Olympics.

Morgan, so the story goes, almost called the whole thing off when he had only six applications just days before the Games were scheduled to begin.

Six guys! That wasn't enough for two tee times at Sunbrook.

But John's wife, Daisy, wouldn't hear of cancelling and at the last minute when 360 people showed up they succeeded in proving two things: John H. Morgan was on to something and procrastination knows no age limit.

Make that three things: You should always listen to your wife.

Sensing this was bigger than he was, and way more expensive, as soon as those inaugural games ended Morgan traveled to Salt Lake City and got an audience with billionaire industrialist Jon Huntsman, seeking financial help.

Bowled over by Morgan's enthusiasm, Huntsman gave him a check for $5,000.

Bowled over by Huntsman's enthusiasm, Morgan waited a few weeks and decided to ask for $20,000 more.

This time Huntsman donated $100,000.

And the Huntsman World Senior Games were born (the name change, made at Morgan's insistence, was not only appropriate but convenient, coinciding as it did with an injunction from the International Olympic Committee to cease and desist using the copyrighted O word).

Twenty years later, Morgan, now 82, is still president of the Games, and Huntsman is still the major benefactor, with a yearly donation that now stands at $250,000.

And the Games that almost died are turning 20.

Thirty more years and the Senior Games will be old enough to compete in themselves.

"The premiere senior sporting event in the world," is how John Romney, director of the Huntsman Games board of trustees, describes the two-week extravaganza.