- Born
- November 9, 1964, Vancouver
- From
- Moved to Langley as a child; Belmont Elementary, Brookswood junior high, Langley Secondary (graduated 1981)
- Event
- Middle distance, mainly the 1,500 m
- Olympics
- Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996 (fourth), Sydney 2000
- Honours
- SFU Athletics Hall of Fame 1994; BC Sports Hall of Fame 2015
- Last checked
- October 23, 2026
At 11 years old, Leah Pells told her Langley track coach she was going to the Olympics. She went three times.
The Langley years
Pells was born in Vancouver and lived in Surrey for a few years before her family settled in Langley. The Langley Advance Times profile written for her 2015 Hall of Fame induction walks through the local stops: Belmont Elementary, Brookswood junior high, then Langley Secondary, where she graduated in 1981, a year early, having skipped Grade 4.
She started running with the South Fraser Track Club in Surrey and switched at eight to the Langley Sports Club, which the paper describes as the forerunner of today’s Langley Mustangs. Her coach there was Steve Read, the one she shared her Olympic plan with.
Simon Fraser
At SFU she met coach Mike Lonergan, who worked with her for about two decades. She ran track and cross-country for the Clan in the late 1980s, once winning the NAIA 800 m and 1,500 m titles at the same championships with the races an hour apart. SFU’s hall of fame says she held the NAIA 1,500 m record for six years. The university inducted her in 1994.
On the world stage
| Year | Event | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 1992 | Barcelona Olympics | Ran the 3,000 m (Olympic.ca lists the event, without a placing) |
| 1996 | Canadian mile record, 4:23.28 | Set that year, per the Advance Times |
| 1996 | Atlanta Olympics, 1,500 m | Fourth, in 4:03.56 |
| 1999 | Pan American Games, Winnipeg, 1,500 m | Silver |
| 2000 | Sydney Olympics, 1,500 m | Did not finish |
The Atlanta race is the one people remember. She missed bronze by about half a second, ran a personal best, and the Advance Times called it the best result by a North American woman in the event to that point. Over her career she ran six world championships and three Commonwealth Games as well as the three Olympics.
Injury and the death of her mother in 2004 brought her running career to an end.
After the track
Pells earned arts and education degrees at SFU and a master’s in counselling at UBC. When the Advance Times caught up with her in 2015 she was a school counsellor in Coquitlam with a small private clinical practice and did motivational speaking. Her memoir, Not About the Medal, came out in 2012.
The BC Sports Hall of Fame inducted her on May 28, 2015, at its Banquet of Champions in Vancouver.
Run where she ran
The Langley Mustangs Track and Field Club is the descendant of her first Langley club. For tracks you can use yourself, see Langley’s running tracks.
We haven’t found an openly licensed photo of Leah Pells. If you have one you took and are willing to share, tell us.
Last checked October 22, 2026. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.
