Runner Ortega, engaging by nature, could be stubborn when he believed it necessary

Lionel Ortega, says his friend and fellow New Mexico distance runner Matt Segura, was a kind and generous man who made friends easily.

“Lionel was one of those guys that would get along with anybody,” Segura said of Ortega, who died on Dec. 23 at age 70 from complications of dementia. “If you were a competitor and you didn’t like him, he liked you no matter what.

“Most people that met Lionel kept in touch with him somehow or some way, and he kept in touch with them. Oh, my, what a person he was.”

Yet, Ortega also was an intense and relentless competitor.

And, oh, my — stubborn, too, when he believed he was right.

On the evening of Aug, 24,1978, Ortega was training on the University of New Mexico track in preparation for the Nike Marathon, scheduled for the following month in Eugene, Oregon. Despite having been a Lobo track-and-field graduate assistant the previous academic year, he was ordered off the track at the behest of then-UNM Athletic Director Lavon McDonald.

Ortega refused. What was the harm, he asked.

McDonald insisted, saying runners were damaging the already damaged grass on UNM’s football field — which the track surrounded — by running on it.

Ortega pointed out he was running on the track, not the field. The exchange finally reached the point at which Ortega said McDonald would need to have him arrested in order to make him leave.

McDonald obliged.

The charges were quickly dropped. And on Sept. 10, 1978, just 17 days later, Ortega won the Nike Marathon, beating a world-class field in the world-class time of 2 hours, 14 minutes, 24 seconds — finishing 10 seconds ahead of runner-up and fellow New Mexican Tony Sandoval.

After his victory, Ortega told Albuquerque Journal sports writer Roger Ruvolo that the kerfuffle at UNM had been a distraction, not a motivation, during his training for the marathon.

“Training-wise, it did bother me,” he said, while pointing out that the track at the University of Oregon was available to runners on a 24-hour basis.

But, almost a half-century later, Segura isn’t so sure.

“You know what, things happen for a reason,” said Segura, a Santa Fe High grad and former UNM teammate of Ortega’s who, with his older brother David, ranked among the Rocky Mountain-Southwest region’s best runners of the 1970s and ‘80s. “When that incident happened, that gave Lionel a boost, and that’s when he won the Nike Marathon. … I think the inspiration was because he got arrested and he was mad and he was gonna show everybody.”

While the victory in Eugene certainly was the highlight of Ortega’s running career, there were many other great moments.

In the fall of 1971, Ortega’s second-place finish at the state prep cross-country meet — behind Los Alamos’ Sandoval — led his West Mesa Mustangs to the team championship. That spring, he won both the mile and the 2-mile for the Mustangs at the inaugural Albuquerque Invitational track meet.

He starred in track and cross country at UNM from 1973-77, earning NCAA All-America honors as he, Segura and Manzano grad Faustino Salazar paced the Lobos to a 15th-place national finish in cross country in 1975.

In 1974, Ortega won the La Luz Trail run, ascending from the foothills to Sandia Crest in a time of 1:03.25. He finished second at La Luz the following year behind his friend Salazar.

After college, partly as a result of his victory at the 1978 Nike Marathon, Ortega caught the eye of Nike — impressed not just with his running talent but with his friendly, outgoing personality.

“He got himself a really good job with Nike,” Segura said. “He wound up in Brazil. From there, while he was in Brazil, he switched from Nike to adidas.”

While living in Brazil, Ortega often came home to be with his family and catch up with friends from his running career such as Segura and Michael Solomon.

His father, Lionel Sr., was a highly successful runner in his own right — though it was the father who followed the son into the sport, not the other way around.

“My boy started me,” the elder Ortega, a marathoner and ultramarathoner, told the Journal in 1986. “I started running seriously when he ran.”

His running career behind him, Segura said, the younger Ortega stayed in shape and derived spiritual satisfaction from long-distance walks.

“They’re called caminos,” Segura said. “He did these pilgrimages around the world. Some of those were, like 500 miles long, but that was his new way of keeping fit.”

In retirement, Ortega returned to live in New Mexico “about a year-and-a-half ago,” Segura said.

He’s survived by his ex-wife, Esmeralda, son Lionel and daughter Marisol, who followed in her father’s footsteps and works for Nike.

Of his friend and fellow runner, Segura said, “Lionel had quite a life.”