Were The Women’s Olympic Qualifying Times Harder Than The Men’s? Looking At The Numbers

With the entry lists for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games being revealed by World Aquatics, we now know who and how many athletes will be appearing in the swimming events.

The qualification criteria were designed so that the quota of 852 athletes had been targeted. The requirements are: Olympic Qualifying Time (OQT, or “A” cut), relay-only swimmers, Universality places and Olympic Consideration Time (OCQ, or “B” cut).

Since the first time women were admitted to Olympic swimming, in 1912, the female participation rate has been increasing over the years. In Paris, it was expected that the percentage of men and women would be equal, thus achieving the much-desired 50% equity stake.

It has been revealed that 854 athletes will be competing in pool swimming events in Paris, two more than the original quota.

We cannot say the same about the 50% equity stake, however. There will be 463 male swimmers and 391 female swimmers in Paris. The women’s rate of participation will be 45.8%, 0.3% higher than Tokyo three years ago, but lower than Rio 2016 and London 2012.

Women’s rate of participation in Olympic swimming

As theoretically the qualification times have the same difficulty levels for all events and there is no privilege towards men in the selection of relay-only and Universality athletes, what explains there being 8.4% more male than female swimmers in Paris?

A stat can help explain. When looking only at swimmers who reached the OQT, or ‘A’ cut, there is a notable difference between women and men. In men’s events, there are 350 entry times under the OQT (247 unique swimmers). In the women’s events, there are only 259 (175 unique swimmers).

The table below shows the number of entries under the OQT by event.

Number of entries under the OQT by event

In every event but two (100 breaststroke and 200 IM), there are more entries under the OQT on the men’s side than on the women’s side. Some differences are notable, especially in the 100 freestyle (14 women versus 32 men) and the 800 freestyle (11 women versus 30 men).

In this article, this trend already existed. In the comparison made at the time, on May 31, there were 346 potential entries under the OQT on the men’s side (considering two swimmers per country), and 267 potential entries on the women’s side.

The OQTs correspond to the time achieved by the 14th-place swimmer in the prelims at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021. If the 14th-place swimmer in Tokyo was slower than the established OQT at the time, the qualifying time for Tokyo remains intact (established from the 14th-place time at Rio 2016).

In that article, we pointed out that this has not made the OQTs the same level of difficulty across the events. Now, it seems that the OQTs are in fact more difficult to achieve in women’s events than in men’s events.

Also, in that article, we argued that there are better ways to design time standards so that the number of swimmers below a given time standard is quite even in different events. This is also valid so the OQTs can become more even among women and men. Only this way, we can expect to achieve the desired 50% equity stake among women and men in swimming.