A large-scale analysis of more than 13,000 results spanning a quarter of a century has shown that women in elite athletics are progressing faster than men and are gradually closing the gap in middle- and long-distance events, infohub.kz reports.
Researcher Tommaso Yuker of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom found that the performance gap between elite male and female track and field athletes continues to shrink steadily. The findings of the large-scale scientific analysis were published in the journal Scientific Reports. The work challenges a view held in sports physiology since the 1980s that the physiological difference between the sexes had stabilized at around 10% owing to aerobic, biomechanical and hormonal differences.
The study was based on official World Athletics records from 2001 to 2025 across 11 running disciplines, from the 60-metre sprint to the classic marathon. The sample covered 13,094 performances by 3,611 leading athletes (1,966 men and 1,645 women) at 971 competitions. On average over the 25 years, women trailed men by 12.6%, but the overall gap narrowed from 13.2% to 11.9%. The smallest difference was traditionally recorded in the 60-metre sprint (9.2%), while the largest shifted from the 10-kilometre distance to the 800 metres.
The narrowing of the gap is driven by faster progress among women rather than a decline among men. Although men improved their average time by 2.2 seconds per kilometre, women's results improved twice as much — by an average of 4.5 seconds per kilometre. Women made their most impressive gains in the half-marathon and marathon, improving their pace by 10.3–12.6 seconds per kilometre (an improvement of 5.0–6.3%). The author stressed that the trend began long before the arrival of innovative carbon-plated running shoes in 2016, linking the success to the development of women's sport.