QUESTION OF THE MONTH

DO WOMEN MAKE FOR BETTER ENDURANCE ATHLETES THAN MEN?

You only need to think of any marathon you’ve watched to assume that men tend to outperform women in sport.

But an interesting recent review published has reignited the discussion. It highlighted that the male-female performance gap in ultra-endurance competitions (events typically more than six hours) is as low as 4 per cent, while it’s around 10 per cent in traditional endurance sport. And the difference seems to reduce the longer the event becomes, to the point that women even outperform men when it comes to events like ultra-distance swimming. Just look at the finishing times for the 45.8km Manhattan Island marathon swim. On average over the past 30 years, the best women have been 12 to 14 per cent faster than the best men.