A Legend Called La Gazelle? : Olympic Champion Marie-Jose Perec Flees France’s Frenzy to Become a Sprinter for the Ages

Although the press back home in Paris has not been kind to her in recent months, Marie-Jose Perec sat in the stands after a workout last week at UCLA’s Drake Stadium and intently read a French sports daily. As often is the case--too often, she thinks--there was an article about her, La Gazelle .

While she had been in her new surroundings too briefly for the author to report on Perec’s progress on the track, he concentrated instead on her other activities since arriving two weeks ago to set up an apartment in Westwood--running errands and shopping. The fascination in France with her everyday life fascinates her.

“I am not Madonna,” she said.

She is, however, one of France’s most prominent sports personalities, the country’s only track and field gold medalist at the 1992 Summer Olympics.

Among the reasons she left France was to escape her fame, which, according to her agent, Tom Sturak of Topanga Canyon, made it difficult for her to stroll along a boulevard, visit a museum, rest at a sidewalk cafe or dine in a restaurant--the enticements of living in Paris--without being disturbed by well-meaning but intrusive fans. Sturak said she would not have that problem in Los Angeles, where track stars, he assured her, are among the dimmest in the galaxy.

Fortunately for Sturak, she has a sense of humor because, while walking toward Drake Stadium for her first workout, she was stopped by two young men who asked for her autograph. When they informed her they were UCLA students from France, she laughed and signed.

Running away from her public, she told Sturak, is less important to her than running toward the destiny she has chosen for herself, which is the primary reason she chose to come to Westwood and work with the accomplished young coach, John Smith. Other Olympic champions he has coached include Steve Lewis, Kevin Young and Quincy Watts.

“She doesn’t speak much English, and I don’t speak much French,” Sturak said. “But she has made it very clear that she wants to leave a mark on this sport beyond winning a gold medal.”

She will begin that quest with a small step, running a relay leg in today’s Mt. San Antonio College Relays at Walnut that she is treating more as an opportunity to introduce herself to Southern California track and field fans than as serious competition. She, however, is very serious about this season and, she said through an interpreter in an interview last week, is determined to prove that she is still the world’s best in her specialty, the 400 meters.

And then, predicted Smith, her new coach, she will go on to conquer the 400-meter hurdles and the 200 and--who knows?--maybe even the 100.

Perec, 25, had no such illusions of grandeur as a child on Basse-Terre, one of two Caribbean islands consolidating to form the French territory of Guadaloupe. A French coach discovered her there almost 10 years ago in a 200-meter race, announcing afterward that her time qualified her for France’s national championships.

“I did not even know what that was,” she said. “I hardly knew what the Olympic Games were.”

Four years later, she was competing in them, reaching the quarterfinals in the 200 at Seoul.

Realizing that she had a bright future in the sport, she resigned herself not only to the Parisian climate, remaining there to train instead of returning to Guadaloupe for the winters, but also to a more disciplined approach to training. She also focused on the 400 meters, a more natural distance for a runner with her tall, lean frame--she’s 5 feet 11 3/4, 132 pounds.

She began to work in November, 1990, with one of France’s best coaches, the no-nonsense Jacques Piasenta, and nine months later became a world champion. The next year, she won the Olympic gold medal, boldly proclaiming that her time at Barcelona, 48.83 seconds, was the fastest ever run by a woman without the assistance of performance-enhancing drugs.

La Gazelle owned Paris. She appeared on virtually every magazine cover and looked as if she belonged in the clothes she modeled for Paco Rabbane and Claude Montana. She even began to take courses so that she could design her own.

But as she became more self-assured off the track, she became more independent on it. She and Piasenta clashed last year, primarily over her decision to run the 200 in the World Championships at Stuttgart, Germany, instead of the 400.

“For me, to try the 200 was a challenge,” she said. “A lot of people thought it was stupid. But if you don’t try new things in life, you don’t get anything out of it. I have no regrets.”

When she finished fourth, some among the French press criticized her for not listening to Piasenta. She lashed back at them for not putting enough emphasis in their reports on her hamstring injury, which she believed prevented her from performing better. In a stormy news conference at Stuttgart, she told them they should spend more time gathering facts instead of pictures of her derriere.

Soon, that was the only part of her anatomy they would see as she turned her back on them.

The same went for Piasenta. They had their final argument before last winter’s European indoor championships at Paris. He insisted that she compete, but she refused because she did not feel she was in top form and did not want to run poorly in front of a home crowd. Before she could fire him, he quit.

“He is a super coach, but athletes have to obey everything he says,” she said. “He is kind of a dictator. I’m OK with following rules, but I want to talk to a coach and tell him how I’m feeling. That is why I came to John Smith. He listens to what the athletes have to say.”

Smith initially resisted, telling her that he would coach her during the winter but that she should remain with Piasenta during the rest of the year. But when it became obvious that her split with Piasenta was irreparable, Smith invited her to Westwood.

So now, Marie-Jose is Mary Jo.

Although she speaks little English, she understands much of what is being spoken around her, and she laughs often at the banter among the other athletes in Smith’s global village, which includes such Olympians as Dennis Mitchell and Young from the United States and John Regis and Tony Jarrett of Great Britain.

“In the group of athletes I was training with in France, there was so much jealousy,” she said. “I think the athletes there hate each other. When I see Mitchell and Regis running together here, I am amazed. It makes them better because they can learn from each other.”

Smith said Perec will fit in nicely.

“She’s a free spirit,” he said.

Asked if she could become the best athlete he has ever coached, Smith said, “She could be one of the best anyone has ever coached.

“She’s got a chance to go to another level, to be up there in the stratosphere. She could be up there with Carl Lewis and Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Edwin Moses and Heike Drechsler. That’s how I want her to think of herself, and I think that’s where she wants to go.”

For this year, Perec said she would be satisfied with regaining the No. 1 ranking that she had in the 400 meters in 1991 and ’92.

“I have to be No. 1,” she said. “I have to prove that I can leave France and still be No. 1.”

When it was suggested that her critics in France might like to see her fail in the United States, she smiled and said, “I hope not, for them.”

She did not have to add that she believes they will be disappointed.