Sex Differences in Swimming Disciplines-Can Women Outperform Men in Swimming?
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review synthesizing existing observational literature and event results without a systematic meta-analysis protocol
PubMed 32456109 · doi:10.3390/ijerph17103651
What was done
The authors conducted a narrative literature review by searching PubMed and Scopus through April 2020 for the terms 'sex-difference-swimming'. They synthesized findings across swimming strokes, event distances ranging from sprints to ultra-distances, water temperature extremes, age categories, and multi-sport disciplines like triathlon, alongside physiological, psychological, anthropometrical, and biomechanical factors.
What was found
In the 'Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming' (Catalina Channel, English Channel, and Manhattan Island Marathon Swim), women swam approximately 0.06 km/h faster than men. In FINA World Championship master swimmers, women achieved comparable performances to men in the oldest age groups (>75-80 years). In the all-time top 100 U.S. freestyle rankings (50 m to 1500 m), the five fastest girls were faster than the five fastest boys until approximately age 10, after which boys became progressively faster through age 17. The primary conditions where female performance exceeded male performance were distances around 30 km and water temperatures below ~20 °C.
Why it matters
This review identifies specific environmental and physiological contexts, particularly cold-water ultra-endurance swimming and age extremes, where the typical male endurance performance advantage narrows or reverses.
Limits
The review is narrative rather than systematic, lacking formal study quality assessments, meta-analytic pooling, or an explicit count of included studies. Findings rely primarily on observational race databases and top-tier rankings, which may be influenced by selection bias, participation rate disparities, and confounding environmental variables.
Cited by
- supports In swimming over long distances, the performance difference between sexes evens out more quickly because women are naturally more buoyant.