Smallest time differential between men & womens major marathon winners?

Women are now almost as fast as Abebe Bikila and closing in on Frank Shorter. I guess those guys never really trained.

2019 Chicago was 8:19

Brigid Kosegi 2:14:04

Lawerence Cherono 2:05:45

One would think it would be at a Boston or NY where there aren't rabbits. If the men ran slow one year while the women hammered, but I just created a spreadsheet comparing the men's and women's winning times in Boston and NY and there has never been a Boston or NY year where the top woman was withing 10 minutes of the top man. Not even close.

And connversely,, what's the biggest margin? My spreadsheet also shows that.

Looking at just the modern era, let's say 2000+, I think the biggest margin is Boston 2018. 23:56.

Des Linden's 2:39:54 vs Yuiki Kawauchi's 2:15:58.

Here is the spreadsheet:

Bruce and Quinn aren't actually afforded the title WMM champions for their virtual wins in 2020, are they?

Galen Rupp was an Olympic marathon medalist and had run five or six marathons before his PR was closer to the men's WR than the women's WR.

I'm using "was" here because I think there's a very good chance we've seen the last of him.

Don't expect a trend in the direction of men and women racing close Marathon times. It's irrelevant that women today are racing as fast as men were racing in 1960. We didn't believe a trend was starting, 1980 Olympics, 800m. Women 800m time, 1:53.43; men, 1:45.40 Women's time was only 7.6185958% slower, 1980 Olympics 800m. That hasn't happened again in 800m at Olympics. Women are not closing performance gap in Marathon at this time.

800m, 12.xx% male, female performance difference. Mixed Marathon, 10.xx% performance difference.

How fast would elite women race 800m if elite women raced 800m with the best D3 males and average D2 males?

If this is for major marathons fine. But there have been women who have won overall marathon titles at smaller races and ultra marathons.

Lol. There were almost 100 d3 guys under 1:54 last year.

Are you volunteering to pace elite women to sub-1:53 800m? Great.

No one running faster than 1:56 this year, even with pacers through 500-600. You can grab some high schoolers if you want though.

Essentially men have a 30 seconds a mile genetic advantage over women. Of course from person to person other factors can mitigate that which is why many fast women beat many men. But 30 seconds a mile is a 13 minute advantage in the marathon. This can be slightly more or less at any given time. But the men's marathon world record is 2:01:09 and the women's record is 2:14:04, a difference of 12:55.

But women's marathon running is so hot right now that on any given race, it is very likely that the top man many indeed finish well less that that 13 minutes faster than the top woman. Interesting note: On very long races, that 30 seconds a mile advantage disappears. But we are talking 100 mile ultra races here. Without going into detail, women have a process of reusing energy that gives a certain advantage but it has to be a LONG race.

We see women closing the gap immediately in free style swimming, 50 meters to 100m, 100m to 200m, 200m to 400m, 400m to 800m, 800m to 1500m. The percentages get closer and closer as the swimming events lengthen. I was talking about this yesterday with one of my daughters' club swimming coach.

A down arrow from a male 1500m swimmer.

Fifty meters freestyle female world record, 23.67; 50m freestyle male w.r., 20.91. 13.1994261% difference. Fifteen-hundred meters freestyle female world record, 15:20.48 or 920.48 seconds; 1500m male freestyle w.r., 14:31.02 or 871.02 seconds. 5.6784% difference.

This is not simply due to Katie Ledecky. This has been a verifiable fact for awhile, freestyle swimming.

I see Sorokin's 100 mile record at 10:51:39 and Herron's 100 mile at 12:41:11, if that's correct then Sorokin has over a minute/mile on Herron.

I do see the difference in the swimming records go from 13% at 50m (20.91/23.67) to 5% at 1500m (14:31.02/15:20.48). Times found on FINA webpage.

The whole ultra running closing the gap myth was just cherry picking races where the women were more elite than the men. Any highly contested ultra event still has a massive 12-15% advantage for the men.

It’s the opposite in running, at 100m the differential is less than in longer events. 9.8/10.0 are basically equal to 19.6/20.0 for men, but 10.8/11.0 are much more prevalent among women than 21.6/22.0. The relative slowdown for women keeps increasing as you look at “elite” times for men and women in longer events. 30 seconds per mile over 100 meters would be 1.9 seconds and 9.5 100m for a man is so much better than 11.4 for a woman.

For swimming, it’s probably somewhat due to the start, as men get much better distance due to height/overall strength and explosiveness.

We do not have possible small sample size error with T&F sprinting and running events 100m to Marathon. It is possible not enough high quality runners, male & female are willing to race ultras, so possible sampling error issue.

Can you extrapolate all those seconds to 26.2 miles for those of us who never competed at sprint distances?