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Is Women's Athleticism Catching Up to Men

This is considering the progress in women’s athletic performance relative to men. I am focused on running and swimming events. I hypothesize that women’s times are getting incrementally closer to men's because the “Money Ball” effect has impacted women’s sports too.

I am going to focus on the following sports events going back to 1960:

• Running: 100 meters, 400 meters, 1,500 meters, and marathon
• Swimming freestyle events: 50 meters, 100 meters, 400 meters, and 1,500 meters

I obtained all the records data from Wikipedia. I attempted a first cut at data gathering using Perplexity. Unfortunately, in this specific case, Perplexity’s results were really bad.

Let’s start with running.

Running

Anatomy of a graph

The graph above depicts the progression of the 100 meters run world record from 1960 to 2024. Each point represents a year's world record (green for women, red for men). The vertical dashed lines show the year the current world record was performed. It was in 2009 for men and 2021 for women. And, there are text labels disclosing that.

As shown above, men’s 100 meters run world record decreased from 10 seconds flat in 1960 to a little above 9.5 seconds by 2009. The women’s 100 meters record decreased from above 11.5 seconds in 1960 to slightly above 10.5 seconds in 2021. Both records hold to this day.

Now that we understand the conveyed data visualization, let’s look at all four running records together.

Running times

The facet graph below shows the world records in the mentioned running events since 1960.

As shown above, some world records are surprisingly old. Here are a couple of examples:

• Usain Bolt (Jamaica) ran the 100 meters in a world record time of 9.572 seconds back in 2009. For a sprinter, Bolt was an unusual giant at 6'5 with the fast cadence of a regular-height sprinter.
• Marita Koch (East Germany) ran the 400 meters in a world record time of 47.60 seconds back in 1985. Her record is clouded by doping controversy. But, it still stands.

For the mentioned reasons, both records may well stand for several more decades.

Running relative performance

The graph below depicts what we are interested in. And, that is whether women’s times are getting closer to men’s. The graph below shows that this is dramatically the case for the marathon. In 1960, women’s record marathon time was over 60% slower than men’s. By 2024, the difference between the two was less than 10%.

Let’s reconstruct the above time series by starting in 1983 when women’s records were more “seasoned.” By then in all four running disciplines, women’s times relative to men’s had shown marked improvements. Let’s now observe how they evolved over the 1983 to 2024 period.

As shown in the graph below, after the 1980s women’s times relative to men’s often stopped improving.

Let’s split up the above graph into a facet graph to give each discipline a closer look.

I find the above trends [flat or even women’s falling further behind] after the 1980s somewhat baffling. This is especially the case for the 100 meters run (orange line above). Let’s give the 100 meters a second look.

In the graph above, see the dramatic improvements in women’s times till the 1980s. In 1988, in the 100 meters event, Florence Griffith Joyner (US), clocked a world record time of 10.61 seconds that will hold until 2021 (10.54). Thus, after 1988 women’s performance remained pretty much flat.

Meanwhile, the men’s trend is just the opposite. Unlike the women’s, their time did not improve much until the 1990s. However, beyond the 1990s they continue to drop dynamically until 2009 when Usain Bolt bursts onto the scene.

As reviewed earlier, the major exception to this flat trend is the marathon. Within this discipline, women have steadily improved their time relative to men. And, now the women’s world record is only 9% slower than men's at 2 hours 11 minutes 88 seconds vs 2 hours 00 minutes 58 seconds, respectively.

Next, let’s move on to swimming.

Swimming

Notice that for the 50 meters freestyle event, I could go back only to 1976. That is unlike the other event where I could go back to 1960.

Swimming times

When looking at the graphs below, the women’s and men’s trends appear somewhat more parallel vs the running events’ trends.

Swimming relative performance

When focusing on relative performance, all four swimming events hover around a time differential of + 7.5% to + 12.5% (meaning women’s times are that much slower than men’s).

Giving the above graph a closer look notice that women’s relative performance vs men's improves as you go from short distances (50 meters, the orange line) to long distances (1,500 meters, the purple line). Somehow, this was expected.

Short distance is about power. Long distance is about endurance and efficiency. The former (power) favors men. The latter (endurance, efficiency) is somewhat of an equalizer.

If we split the graph into a facet one to give each discipline a closer look, you can clearly see that the longer the distance, the better women have done relative to men (the lines drop faster as time goes by).

The most spectacular improvement in women relative to men is in the 1,500 meters freestyle. This is for some of the mentioned reasons. It is also because of a true outlier phenomenon: Katie Ledecky.

Katie Ledecky has owned the world record in the 1,500 since 2013 when she was only 16. Her personal best in 2018 is still the current world record. She owns 20 of the top 20 fastest times. Her personal best is over 18 seconds faster than the second-fastest swimmer. She has made a huge contribution towards women’s times converging towards men in the 1,500. Currently, her best time is only 5% slower than the men’s world record. This must be the best women’s performance relative to men’s in any clocked sports.

Katie Ledecky’s long-standing dominance in the 1,500 may have no counterpart in sports. She may be the GOAT among GOATs.

Conclusion

• When you look at all events, it appears that the seasoned difference is around 10% (women’s time being slower than men’s time).
• Katie Ledecky in the 1,500 meters freestyle is a marked exception to this general tendency. Indeed, she brings women’s time being only 5% slower than men’s.

THE END

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