With a New Country, She Sees New Horizons : L.A. Marathon: Mexican-born Olga Appell hopes to go places as America’s fastest female.

Funny how joining a country of 248 million can make a person feel so alone.

Olga Appell raised her right hand with 109 others at the Albuquerque Elks Club last Friday and shivered not in joy, but weariness.

It was supposed to be a day of excitement, of liberation. With one oath, Mexico’s fastest female marathoner became the United States’ fastest female marathoner.

She had made the most important run of her life, a run for the border. And she had finished.

So why did she feel so strange? Why could she not stop thinking about her disapproving brothers in the mountain town of Durango, Mexico?

Why could she not stop thinking about a Mexican government official whose alleged extortion attempts drove her from the country? A man who has vowed to cause her more grief?

“I feel so happy,” Appell said. “But also, I feel a little sad.”

That night, at home with only her 6-year-old daughter, there was no party, no congratulatory phone call, no celebration.

That is what Sunday is for.

Wearing bib No. F1 for her first race as a U.S. citizen, Appell hopes to turn the Los Angeles Marathon into a personal welcoming reception.

She hopes to see the course lined with Latino spectators. She hopes to hear cheers from those who also refuse to accept oppression.

She hopes not merely to finish among the leaders, but live up to her status as the favorite by winning.

Then, perhaps, she will hear a chant that will feel like a hug. It has become a cliche, but it will remind her that becoming a citizen was not just her best choice, but her only choice: “U.S.A., U.S.A.”

“This is a very, very special race for me,” said Appell, 30. “All the Latino people, the sense of community there . . . all for my first race as an American. Yes, I want very, very much to win.”

This new beginning also represents the end of a long, twisting road for this former secretary who began running to lose weight after giving birth to daughter Monique six years ago.

While she cites Monique’s stability as the main reason she decided to join her husband, Brian, as a U.S. citizen, she admits she was also pushed from a country that once considered her a heroine.

“Because the government controls the press, I don’t know if anybody even knows I am gone yet,” Appell said. “But when they find out, well, maybe I won’t be such a hero anymore.”

Her last major race as a Mexican was last fall in the New York Marathon, where she was second in 2 hours 28 minutes 56 seconds, faster than any American woman last year.

But according to Brian Appell, her husband and coach, the president of the Mexican Athletics Federation, Mexico’s governing body for track and field, asked for one-third of her $30,000 winnings.

Julian Nunez Arana allegedly phoned Brian Appell and requested $10,000 or he would suspend Olga from the federation because she was never given formal permission to run in New York.

“I told him he was crazy,” said Brian, a former track star at Fountain Valley High. “It was the last straw.”

Nunez, contacted through an interpreter at his Mexico City home Wednesday, called Appell’s charges, “an absolute lie.”

“I don’t know what this woman is looking for.”

Nunez warned that the Mexican government would hold Appell to the letter of the international track law, which forbids a defecting athlete from competing in a world-class event for three years after their last appearance for their old country.

Because Appell ran for Mexico in the World Championships last August, the rule could prevent her from running in the 1996 Olympic Games at Atlanta were she to qualify for the U.S. team.

However, U.S. track officials cite a clause in the rule that allows athletes who change countries because of marriage to begin competing for their new country immediately.

“We expect her to be in the hunt for a medal in Atlanta,” said John Mansoor, assistant to the executive director of USA Track & Field.

It might be the first time Appell has been given a break. She said that even from her first victory as a Mexican runner, she suffered from mistreatment.

“As an American, I can now run stress-free,” she said. “I can run where I want. I don’t have to ask permission.”

Appell said she was backed into a corner from the time she was a surprise 3,000-meter winner in the Mexican national championships three years ago.

She had trained in Germany, so officials didn’t believe she was Mexican. She had to retrieve her birth certificate from Durango before her victory was declared official.

The next year, she said, she was forced to pay her way from Germany to an America’s Cup race in Colombia because the Mexican federation failed to reimburse her plane ticket as promised.

Even in her moment of greatest triumph--a marathon victory in the Pan American Games in Cuba in 1991--there was a catch.

She said she wanted to run the 10,000 meters instead of the marathon, but the Mexican federation forced her to run the longer distance. Four weeks later, she faltered in the 10,000 meters at a lucrative meet because she was exhausted.

Several members of her family, particularly two brothers, still wondered why she would turn her back on her homeland. Until she signed the papers in December, she questioned it herself.

Appell hopes Sunday will provide another persuasive argument. “I will wear the same running clothes as always, I will be the same runner,” she said. “But I will be different.”

Times staff writer Kevin Baxter contributed to this story.