ST. GEORGE

A word of advice: If John Romney tells you he has walked across the Atlantic Ocean to spread the word about the Huntsman World Senior Games, just agree with him.

Romney is a big fan of the Senior Games that have been held annually here in St. George for the past 23 years for athletes ages 50 and older.

He has watched the field grow from slightly more than 300 entrants the first year to the nearly 10,000 entered this year.

He has seen sports regularly added until there are now 26 different competition categories (new this year: shooting).

And he has seen participation expand from mostly Utah locals to athletes representing every state in the union and no less than 20 foreign countries (Bolivia, Estonia and the Virgin Islands are new this year).

"It's gotten so big that now we're at the point where we're going to have to expand to a third week, or we're going to have to cap the number of people who can participate in any given sport," Romney said Tuesday before the opening ceremonies in Hansen Stadium.

He uses the "we" pronoun when talking about the Games because he has been Jon Huntsman Sr.'s personal envoy to the project from the beginning.

Romney served for years as the billionaire philanthropist's full-time executive assistant. When Romney retired recently, he gave up many of his duties. But Huntsman kept him on as his eyes and ears to the Senior Games.

"I can't imagine anyone being more committed to an event than Jon Huntsman and his wife Karen are to this one," said Romney. "He loves the Senior Games and what they stand for. He has never spared any time or expense to keep them going forward."

Which brings us back to Romney's story about walking the Atlantic Ocean.

It was in the early 1990s, when the Huntsman Games were old enough to be an established fixture in St. George and many parts of the country, but remained relatively unknown outside the United States.

Huntsman and Romney boarded the billionaire's jet and flew to Europe to talk to any mayors, prime ministers, economic-development directors and over-50 sportsmen they could find.

They divided to conquer. Huntsman went to England. Romney went to Germany.

Then an urgent business matter required Huntsman to return to America immediately. Naturally, he took his jet.

That left Romney to quickly book a commercial flight back home to join the boss.

Delta Airlines had one seat left out of Frankfurt. He took it.

When he boarded the plane, it wasn't exactly a surprise to find that the one spot left was in the center of a middle row of five seats.