Follow the science: Comparing athletic performances of elite women to boys and men

A study out of Duke Law's Center For Sports Law And Policy

Scientific studies are not always light reading, but here authors Doriane Lambelet Coleman and Wickliffe Shreve lay out the results of comparative track and field data in a way that’s easy to read and understand.

Follows is the distillation of their results. To go to the Duke Law website with supporting tables, sources, and further reading on the topic, click here.

Comparing Athletic Performances: The Best Elite Women to Boys and Men

by Doriane Lambelet Coleman and Wickliffe Shreve

If you know sport, you know this beyond a reasonable doubt: there is an average 10-12% performance gap between elite males and elite females.  The gap is smaller between elite females and non-elite males, but it’s still insurmountable and that’s ultimately what matters.  Translating these statistics into real world results, we see, for example, that:

Just in the single year 2017, Olympic, World, and U.S. Champion Tori Bowie's 100 meters lifetime best of 10.78 was beaten 15,000 times by men and boys.  (Yes, that’s the right number of zeros.)

The same is true of Olympic, World, and U.S.  Champion Allyson Felix’s 400 meters lifetime best of 49.26.  Just in the single year 2017, men and boys around the world outperformed her more than 15,000 times.

This differential isn’t the result of boys and men having a male identity, more resources, better training, or superior discipline. It’s because they have an androgenized body.

The results make clear that sex determines win share.  Female athletes – here defined as athletes with ovaries instead of testes and testosterone (T) levels capable of being produced by the female non-androgenized body – are not competitive for the win against males—here defined as athletes with testes and T levels in the male range.  The lowest end of the male range is three times higher than the highest end of the female range.  Consistent with females’ far lower T levels, the female range is also very narrow, while the male range is broad.

These biological differences explain the male and female secondary sex characteristics which develop during puberty and have lifelong effects, including those most important for success in sport: categorically different strength, speed, and endurance.  There is no other physical, cultural, or socioeconomic trait as important as testes for sports purposes.

The number of men and boys beating the world’s best women in the 100 and 400 meters is far from the exception. It’s the rule.  To demonstrate this, we compared the top women’s results to the boys’ and men’s results across multiple standard track and field events, just for the single year 2017.  Our data are drawn from the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) website which provides complete, worldwide results for individuals and events, including on an annual and an all-time basis. 

We have limited the analysis to those events where a direct performance comparison could be made.  For instance, we included the 100 meters because both males and females compete over exactly the same distance; but we excluded the shot put because males and females use a differently weighted shot.