Who knows what talent lies hidden in each of us, waiting to be discovered. A musician, an athlete, a writer, a painter - they are all possibilities, but often they wait undiscovered, simply because no one thought to look for them. Sometimes, quite by accident or fate, they are found.
Take Olga Appell, for instance. Seven years ago, at the age of 23, she began running to lose weight following her first pregnancy. In the process, she discovered, accidentally, world-class running talent. Today she ranks as one of the top distance runners in the world. Quite suddenly, a former bank employee from Mexico has a lucrative running career.Last fall Appell was second in the New York Marathon. In January she was second in the Tokyo half-marathon, running the fifth fastest time in history, 1:08:31. In March she won the L.A. Marathon in 2:28:12. In April she won the Mt. SAC Relays 10,000-meter run on the track in 32:03 and in May the prestigious Lilac Bloomsday road race. In June she won the 10,000 at the U.S. track championships, beating Olympic bronze medalist Lynn Jennings in the process.
For her next race, Appell will descend from her mountain training center in New Mexico to run in Monday's Deseret News/Granite Furniture 10,000-meter road race. Then she'll return to mountain seclusion to resume training for a major fall marathon.
All of which is a dramatic turn of events for a woman who, until seven years ago, had never run competitively. In high school Appell tried out for the track team - as a high jumper. She played some volleyball and basketball, little suspecting that somewhere inside her lurked the lungs and legs of a distance runner.
All that changed when she met Brian Appell while working in a bank in her hometown of Durango, Mexico. Actually, it was an injury to Appell that started the chain of events that would change Olga DeAvalos's life. After three years as a steeplechaser at Weber State, Appell came up lame with a calf injury and was forced to miss his senior season. He left school and went to Mexico, where he did nothing but "hang out at restaurants and talk." Then he met Olga, married her a year later, joined the Army in 1986 and moved to Colorado Springs.
After giving birth to a daughter, Olga began running to get her body back in shape. The Appells were transferred to Germany, where Brian resumed his running career. At one of the competitions, Olga informed Brian that she thought she could run as well as the women she saw in the track meets. She began to train and race. She ran 10,000 meters in a modest 43 minutes. Curious, Brian took her resting pulse rate one morning. It was 38 beats per minute, the beat of an athlete.
Three months later, Olga ran 10,000 meters in 38 minutes. In the following months she ran 1,500 meters on the track in 4:22, and Brian realized he had a real talent on his hands. In 1989, just two years after she had begun running, Olga ran her first 10,000 on the track and recorded a time of 32:49, and suddenly shoe companies, road races and agents were knocking on her door.
The following year she won the Houston Marathon in 2:33:18 and set a meet record in winning the Pan American Games marathon. She has improved steadily since then.
"She's one of the best around right now, but that's her agent speaking," says Olga's agent, Bob Wood. "She's getting better every year, and the thing is she hasn't been running that long. She's really intense. She's hungry. She wants to be great."
Olga, now 30 and a U.S. citizen as of February, lives in a motor home in the mountains above Albuquerque for two months at a time on and off throughout the year. Without the conveniences or distractions of a TV or phone (and often human company), she runs 80 to 100 miles a week over mountain trails, all at 8,500 feet.
"She just runs, rests and eats," says Brian, who, along with their daughter Monique, alternately lives in the motor home or at the couple's training base in Albuquerque. The training base consists of three houses, which the Appells rent to runners who have come to town to be coached by Brian. He has become a professional coach, having prepared himself by picking the brains of Soviet and German coaches while stationed in Germany and by studying books on physiology. Four of the 10 runners he coaches, he notes, have attained world-class status. And then there's his prize pupil.
Who knows how good Olga can be. She is so designed for running - fluid and long (nearly 5-foot-10), with a resting pulse rate of 29 - that her talent now seems obvious. But of course it wasn't. It took fate to find it.