Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 2, 1992 TAG: 9201020078
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From Associated Press reports
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
WOMEN RUNNERS MAKE MOVE
Top female runners have been improving about twice as quickly as the fastest men, a trend that suggests women might start outrunning men in competition within 65 years, a study says.If the trend continues, the top female and male runners might start performing equally well between the years 2015 and 2055 in the 200-meter, 400-meter, 800-meter and 1,500-meter events, the study said.
However, other researchers said they doubted the projections because they believed the women's rate of improvement would slow in the future.
The new extrapolation also suggests that the marathon record for women will equal that of men in 1998 at just under 2 hours, 2 minutes, but that projection may have been thrown off by limited data, said study co-author Brian Whipp.
"I find the prospect so improbable that were it not for the data I wouldn't have considered it conceivable," said Whipp, professor of physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine.
The world marathon record for women has been 2 hours, 21 minutes and 6 seconds since 1985. The men's record is about 14 minutes faster.
Whipp and colleague Susan Ward present their results in a letter to the editor published in today's issue of the science journal Nature.
The work is based on world records sampled at 10-year intervals through 1985, starting in 1905 for men. Reliable women's records started only in the 1920s and women's marathon records were included only since 1955, Whipp said.
Women's speeds may have risen so fast because larger numbers of women started running competitively in recent decades, increasing the talent pool and the chance of finding better runners, suggested Andrew Biewener, associate professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago who studies locomotion and gait.
But he said he expects the women's rates of improvement to slow. "It's unlikely that women will eclipse men in the near future," because of their generally smaller stature, he said.
Charles M. Tipton, a professor of exercise and sport sciences at the University of Arizona, said the women's faster rate of improvement appeared because they started training as intensively as men only in the last 15 years or so.
Because of anatomical differences such as hip width, he said, "the best male will beat the best female."
Ann Ward, co-director of the exercise physiology and nutrition laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, said she believed women's rates of improvement will taper off to resemble those of men.
"I don't think [women] will quite catch up to men, and I don't think they will surpass men's records," she said.