How the World’s Fastest Male and Female Runners Compare
Have you ever wondered as a runner how men and women compare in their world records for everything from a 100-meter race to a marathon and beyond?
A simple way to make this kind of comparison is to take each of the popular race distances, get the world-record time for men and the world-record tiime for women for that distance, and compare those two times to get a percentage advantage for one group versus the other group for that distance.
Based on the latest statistics, mostly from IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations), here is how much world-record males are faster than world-record females. Each difference is calculated as 100% times(female duration minus male duration) divided by female duration. For example, at the 100-meter distance, Usain Bolt’s world record is 9.50% faster than Florence Griffith-Joyner’s world record.
Initials: The letter “m” refers to meters (“metres”). The letter “K” refers to kilometers (“kilometres”). “10,000 m” refers to track races; “10K” refers to road races.
- 9.50% in 100 m: 9.58 (U. Bolt, 2009) vs. 10.49 (F. Griffith-Joyner, 1988)
- 11.20% in 200 m: 19.19 (U. Bolt, 2009) vs. 21.34 (F. Griffith-Joyner, 1988)
- 10.24% in 400 m: 43.18 (M. Johnson, 1999) vs. 47.60 (M. Koch, 1985)
- 12.04% in 800 m: 1:41.11 (W. Kipketer, 1997) vs. 1:53.28 (J. Kratochvilova, 1983)
- 11.87% in 1500 m: 3:26.00 (H. El Guerroujm 1998) vs. 3:50.46 (Y. Qu, 1993)
- 13.19% in 1 mile: 3:43.13 (H. El Guerrouj, 1999) vs. 4:12.56 (S. Masterkova, 1996)
- 10.31%