Learn Spanish (Spain): El atleta está a punto de competir en el campeonato. - The athlete is about to compete in the championship.

The phrase estar a punto de means "to be about to" do something. It describes an action that is going to happen very soon. It always uses the verb estar (never ser) because it highlights a temporary state at a specific moment in time, and it must be followed by an infinitive verb, which in this case is competir.

The word atleta ends in -a, so why does it use the masculine article el?

Atleta is a two-way noun, meaning it can be either masculine or feminine depending on the person being talked about, but the spelling of the word itself does not change. Because we see el atleta, we know this specific athlete is male. If it were a female athlete, the sentence would start with la atleta.

Why is the verb competir not conjugated?

In Spanish, whenever a verb immediately follows a preposition like de, it must stay in its infinitive (unconjugated) form. Because the fixed structure of this lesson's phrase ends with the preposition de, the action verb that follows it will always be an infinitive.

Is the word campeonato related to the word for "champion"?

Yes, it comes directly from campeón (champion). In Spanish, the suffix -ato is often added to a noun to describe a title, jurisdiction, or event related to that base word. So, adding it to the word for champion gives us campeonato, meaning "championship."