The sex difference in swimming speed among the fastest open-water ultra-distance swimmers decreased significantly between 1973 and 2012.
Performance gap narrowed in elite ultra-swimmers; hypothesis-generating for participation or training factors.
In La Traversée Internationale du Lac St-Jean, held between 1955 and 2012 in Canada, the fastest women (r(2) = 0.61, p < 0.0001) and men (r(2) = 0.66, p < 0.0001) improved swimming speed over the years but the sex difference remained unchanged at 8.8% ± 5.6% (r(2) = 0.069, p = 0.065). Annually, for the 3 fastest swimmers, both women (r(2) = 0.53, p < 0.0001) and men (r(2) = 0.71, p < 0.0001) improved swimming speed between 1973 and 2012 and the sex difference decreased (r(2) = 0.29, p = 0.0016) from 14.4% ± 11.0% (1973) to 3.7% ± 1.4% (2012).
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Rüst et al. (2013) studied this question.
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