Marie-José Pérec (Athlètes Olympiques Français)

"Marie-José Pérec (Athlètes Olympiques Français)" has been shared to the blog from the French reading practice section of the learning library where you can find a large selection of interactive texts to help you with your reading skills.


Known as “La Gazelle”, Guadeloupe-born Marie-José Pérec is one of the greatest sprinters in the history of athletics. Her incredible speed and grace brought her international fame and a place in the annals of track and field. As part of our series “Athlètes Olympiques Français”, (re)discover the inspiring journey of this remarkable athlete in a short video and our bilingual transcript.

After watching the video, scroll down for the transcript in our bilingual reader, where you can click any French phrase for the English translation and related grammar lessons.

Note: The tenses in this French article and its English translation don’t match! In French, we use the present tense to describe historical stories like this to evoke a sense of immediacy, whereas in English, we commonly use the past tense – learn more about historical French tenses.

 

Click any word in the text to see its translation and related grammar lessons.

 

Author info

Céline Pickard

For over ten years now, Céline has been teaching French and Italian to students of all ages and abilities in the UK. This French native speaker comes from Brittany, and likes crafts, Breton dance (of course!) and Breton music which she actually played for four years. She also has a fondness for European cinema and British History.

Aurélie Drouard

Aurélie is our resident French Expert. She has created most of the wonderful content you see on the site and is usually the person answering your tricky help questions. She comes from a small village near Chartres in Central France, country of cereal fields and not much else. She left (in a hurry) to study English at the world-famous Sorbonne in Paris, before leaving France in 2007 to experience the “London lifestyle” - and never looked back! She's worked as a professional French teacher, translator and linguist in the UK since.  She loves to share her love of languages and is a self-professed cinema and literature geek!