Berlin 2023 was only Ms. Assefa’a third attempt at the distance, following a 2:34:17, 7th place in her debut in Riyadh Saudi Arabia in March 2022 and her victory in last year‘s Berlin Marathon at 2:15:37, at the time, the third best performance by a woman in history.
There were as many enthusiastic supporters as there were skeptics in the wake of Assefa’s run. So I thought I would dig a little deeper into the women’s world records vis-à-vis the men’s to see what the percentages might show while putting Ms. Assefa’s performance into historical perspective.
There have always been people who believe that, as the distances increase, the more likely it is that women will fare better in comparison to men. We see this to be true at the ultramarathon level, where female athletes beat men in straight up competition. But the marathon, though long, is still in relative terms a power event, whereby the strength provided by testosterone for men still easily trumps the best that women can produce.
Here are the percentage breakdowns between the women’s and men’s World Records:
DISTANCE
Marathon – 2:11:53 = 91.896% of 2:01:09
100m 10.49 = 91.325% of 9.58
400m 47.60 = 90.399% of 43.03
10,000m 29:01.03 = 90.234% of 26:11.00
200m 21.34 = 89..925% of 19.19
1500m 3:49.11 = 89.913% of 3:26.00
5000 14:00.21 = 89.901% of 12:35.36
800m 1:53.28 = 89.080% of 1:40.91
FIELD EVENTS
Triple Jump – 15.74m = 86.05% of 18.29m
High Jump – 2.09m = 85.30% of 2.45m
Long Jump – 7.52m = 84.02% of 8.95m
Pole Vault – 5.06m = 81.22% of 6.23m
The discus, shotput, hammer throw, and javelin all use different sized and weighted implements for women than men. So, it is not an apple to apple comparison.
But it is interesting how different the percentages of world records in the jumps and pole vault are for the women vis-à-vis the men, don’t you think? Is that because the jumps are more purely power-based events, in which testosterone levels are even more determinative?
The differences in running events go from 89% to 92%. But the difference in the field events span 81% in the pole vault to 86% in the triple jump. None are anywhere near the 90% mark we find for the women’s running events.
As the great ultra runner Camille Herron wrote on her FB page, the 8.13% gap between Assefa’s 2:11:53 and Kipchoge’s 2:01:09 still falls within the range of previous record leaps. In fact, it falls short of the 7.40% gap between Paula Radcliffe’s 2:15:25 world record in London 2003, to Khalid Khannouchi‘s men’s world record of 2:05:38 from Chicago in 2002 (and how long ago does that time seem today?!) Paula’s 2:15:25 remains fifth all-time for women, while Special K’s 2:05:38 ranks 148th best for men.
None of this either confirms or discriminates against Ms. Assefa’s new world record. But the hue and cry that followed her mark just underscores how damaged this sport has become due to its past transgressors and the corruptions at every level that allowed them to exist.
As I wrote on my own FB page, sadly, no one is allowed to display excellence anymore free of the skepticism that has been engineered into the sport for a long, long time. Too much dirty water has flowed beneath our bridges through the years. For the clean athlete, super shoes notwithstanding, it is a skepticism they are forced to confront thanks to their less honorable brethren, and those that enabled them.
And the spate of records that have fallen due to the super shoe revolution, they can be traced to the, let’s call it late governing oversight that allowed the early super shoes to enter the competitive arena in secret then go unchallenged for several years as other manufacturers struggled to catch up. Today, Tigst Assefa lives with those consequences, both for good and ill, as must we all.
Onward!
END
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0BLQSFCZR/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=
tonireavis.com 
Toni, This makes a constructive and substantial contribution to the debate. Thank you (from the mathematically challenged). I have forwarded it widely. To try another constructive contribution, relevant to your lament about skepticism and dirty water, why can nothing be said about such doubts at post-race media conferences? Why don’t the managers make clear statements that no PEDs have been used? The last to do that was Paula Radcliffe, who said “Freeze my blood and test it in 50 years with future technologies.” Or why not race directors spell out their drugs testing procedures? Don’t blame me for being skeptical that Assefa so far only races well in Berlin, when no one is giving me any reassurance that all is honest. Of course it proves nothing in individual cases, but I’m concerned with changing this very weird culture in which no one may talk about the thing everyone is talking about. Supershoes may be mere diversion. Many decades ago, every runner had to sign a declaration of amateurism before every race. Perhaps demand an equivalent declaration of being PED free, to show that the sport actually knows it has this huge, obvious, and self-destructive problem.
Thank you, Toni, for the balanced manner with which you approach and write about our beloved sport. I rejoice in her amazing WR and hope it is purely the result of training, shoes, and a day when everything came together.
Toni
It is easy to be skeptical of new WRs like Assefa’a. Good for though!
I would point out though, that Mondo Duplantis has set multiple WRs, and I’ve not heard anyone suggest that he’s not clean. Much of that could be that his parents were Olympic athletes and he’s been a vaulting prodigy since he was very young.
I agree. But the vaulting population base is much smaller than any of the track events, none of which require expensive equipment and vaulting venues. And given Mondo‘s parentage and lifelong vaulting background and focus, the chances for an outlier to emerge in the polevault is much greater than it is in the sprints, middle distances, or even distances. Thanks for contributing.
Toni
Toni, thanks for doing all the arithmetic.
A good rational summary here. I too thought of Paula Radcliffe’s record when thinking about this.
Excellent piece Toni. Still processing this one.
Sent from my iPhone
<
div dir=”ltr”>
<
blockquote type=”cite”>