Second person in France entering competition gets distressed (3,2)
I believe the answer is:
cut up
'distressed' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'second person in france entering competition' is the wordplay.
'second person in france' becomes 'tu' (second-person pronoun in French).
'entering' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'competition' becomes 'cup' (eg the FA Cup).
'tu' placed inside 'cup' is 'CUT-UP'.
'gets' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for cut up that I've seen before include "Miserable" , "collage" , "Chop into bits - deeply offended" , "Dice, chop" , "Extremely upset" .)