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Comment by pmiller2 | Hacker News Reader

Women do as well or better than men in ultra distance swimming. See https://www.thecut.com/2016/09/the-obscure-endurance-sport-w...

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That article actually says that the average time for women is faster than the average time for men and that the fastest male times are still much faster than the fastest female times. The hypotheses they propose for the difference are either selection bias due to differing participation levels or possibly body fat percentage difference leading to greater bouyancy which specifically helps in swimming.

Women also do remarkably well in ultrarunning. See Courtney Dauwalter who just took 2nd place overall at Tahoe 200 miler and legends like Ann Trason

Or Camille Herron, who set the overall course record on a 100 mile trail course. https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a20863588/cheers-100-miles...

Camille's run wasn't particularly remarkable--about 10% slower than the men's 100 mile record.

Much more amazing to me is that this 10% performance difference holds remarkably steady for men and women's performance in a great range of distances, both running and swimming[0].

[0] - https://sportsscientists.com/2007/10/women-vs-men-part-ii-th...

If a world record isn't particularly remarkable then I don't know what is

Comment above:

> Women also do remarkably well in ultrarunning.

Yes, a world record is always remarkable in the general sense.

But in this specific context (discussing the coach's claim that women are "more capable of long-distance peak performance"), I wanted to point out that women's ultrarunning world records are not particularly better or worse than women's world records at other distances, even sprints.

Yep, I've heard the same about thru-hiking. Women might be faster at running 2000+ miles than men. It's for efforts measured in minutes or hours that the fastest men are faster than the fastest women.

Edit: I wasn't expecting my comments here to be so controversial

Do you have any source for this? It seems with such a small participation rate for thru-hiking, getting any sort of meaningful data about relative abilities would be unlikely.

That's very true, extraordinarily few people are going for fastest times on these, so it's quite speculative. Here's an article about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/sports/on-the-longest-hik...

Women tend to be lighter than men, which likely makes a difference.

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