OPINION|
Frank Tilton, 77, of Springfield, looks fit. He is 6-foot-4 and 175 pounds. He wears a USA Track & Field shirt and shades.
When he laces up his pale-yellow track spikes, the picture of a competitive athlete settles into focus.
Then when I watch Tilton sprint down the long-jump runway at Springfield Catholic High School with a grace and quickness that belies his age, I know it's true. Tilton is, indeed, an athlete.
His more than 400 track-and-field medals from Senior Games competitions prove it.
“I enjoy competing against people and I enjoy trying to beat them,” he tells me. “I just try to win everything.”
It's true, says Mary, his wife of 51 years.
“I just think it's in his DNA,” Mary tells me. “And probably a certain amount of that is good because it keeps him going. It keeps him focused. He's talking about next year again. He's not doing as well as he used to. Getting old is humbling. It's the camaraderie and we've met so many nice people.”
Tilton was 60 when he started athletic career
Tilton has no high school glory days. Neither was he an athlete in college.
He is a former accountant. He was already old when he started his athletic career.
When he was 57, he had gone to the Springfield Catholic outdoor track to jog. His three children went to Springfield Catholic. He came upon an all-comers track meet.
“There was a lady standing by the high jump pit and I said to her, ‘Just tell me how to do this,'” he says.
Three years later he competed in his first Senior Games event.
Tilton has never had a coach; he learns by watching YouTube videos.
His best self analysis regarding his competitive nature is that he grew up poor in St. Joseph. His father died when he was 1.
“My step-dad did not have very good jobs,” Tilton says. “I was the first in my family to go to college.”
102-year-old man raced 100 meters
There is a National Senior Games Association and a Missouri State Senior Games.
You have to be at least 50 years old by Dec. 31 in the year in which you compete. Age divisions have five-year spreads for men and women.
Tilton once witnessed a 102-year-old man run the 100 meters.
“It took him a while, but he finished.”
Tilton competes in several Senior Games track meets every year throughout the nation. He pays his own way, as do all the competitors.
Earlier this month, he was at the Huntsman World Senior Games in St. George, Utah. He finished second in the triple jump, third in the high jump and fourth in the long jump. The track-and-field results available online include wind measurements — its strength and whether it was in competitors' faces or at their backs. These people are serious.
Senior Games sporting events include golf, basketball, pickleball, rugby, soccer, horseshoes, shooting, shuffleboard, table tennis, swimming, tennis, triathlon and volleyball.
He has met two track-and-field legends
Over the years, Tilton says, he has made friends with fellow competitors and had the honor of meeting two track-and-field legends.
They are John Carlos, who finished third in the 200-meter dash in the 1968 Olympics and famously raised a black-gloved fist on the medal podium, and Dick Fosbury, who revolutionized the high jump with the Fosbury flop and won gold in the same Olympics.
Fosbury died in March of 2023.
“There's a lot more to it than going and competing,” Tilton says.
Tilton's best marks ever are 4 feet, 11 inches in the high jump; 15 feet, 2 inches in the long jump; and 30 feet and 10 and 1/2 inches in the triple jump.
He's past the point of improvement, as is just about everyone else who competes in Senior Games in track and field.
Time marches on.
Tilton wears a brace on his arthritic right knee. He also has a cyst on that knee which a doctor drains every three months.
“My doctor tells me I need a knee replacement,” Tilton tells me. “But he also told me I shouldn't jump once I have a knee replacement.”
Tilton knows other older athletes who jump with artificial knees.
“The worry is about wearing it out,” he says. “But at 77, I'm not too worried about that.”
This is Pokin Around column No. 141.
