Comparing Men’s & Women’s Records In Swimming

Courtesy: Dominique Hérailh

In virtually all sports, performance differences exist between men and women, primarily due to morphological distinctions between the sexes. This article examines several questions about how these differences vary in swimming across distances and pool sizes and even in another similar sport, track and field.

How do performance differences evolve with distance?

For this initial analysis, we focus on freestyle swimming because it includes the widest range of distances.

The graph shows that the performance gap between men and women narrows almost linearly as distance increases. This raises the question: will the women’s performance curve eventually intersect with the men’s, or will it level out? Generally, the gap decreases by around 1.4 percentage points each time the distance doubles. The 400-meter race is an exception to this trend. Based on the data, we would expect a gap of approximately 8.6%, yet the actual gap is under 7%. This difference can be traced back to 2009, when Federica Pellegrini set the women’s 400-meter record at 3:59.15, achieving a gap of +8.67% from Paul Biedermann‘s men’s record. Since then, three top female swimmers—Katie Ledecky, Summer McIntosh, and Ariarne Titmus—have surpassed Pellegrini’s record. Given the small remaining margin to the women’s record, it seems likely that the men’s 400-meter record will be broken next.

Here’s a summary of all the LCM records:

Are men’s and women’s strengths and endurance expressed differently over distance?

The trend suggests that men’s strength is most evident over shorter distances, while women’s endurance may yield better relative performance in longer events. If this observation holds, it should also apply to track and field, where races cover both short and long distances.

Does this trend hold in track and field?

In track and field, however, the performance gap does not follow the same pattern as in swimming. For shorter distances, the gap is narrower. For example, Usain Bolt’s 100-meter world record analysis shows that his maximum speed (12.19 m/s) was reached around the 50-meter mark, which may account for better male sprint performance up to the 400 meters. The difference is likely due to air resistance in running versus water resistance in swimming, where water’s greater density makes the hydrodynamic profile crucial at longer distances, narrowing the performance gap as distance increases.

Does the performance gap differ between LCM and SCM?

In short-course meters (SCM) races, the gap between men’s and women’s times is on average 2 percentage points larger than in long-course meters (LCM) races. The SCM curve follows a similar trend to LCM, but the additional turns and underwater sections in SCM allow men to increase their lead due to their generally higher strength off the walls. In short-course yards (SCY) races, the proportion of underwater time to total race time is even higher, widening the gap further.

Are certain swimming events more favorable to women?

Swimming events can be compared over 50, 100, and 200 meters by calculating the average gap across these distances. The results indicate that the performance difference between event types isn’t substantial enough to conclude that any particular style of swimming is more suited to women than another.

In summary, men’s advantage in strength tends to show over short distances, while women’s endurance appears advantageous over longer distances. The extent of these differences, however, varies by sport and by course type (LCM vs. SCM vs. SCY).