# Bristol study: elite women narrowed the gap to men in running at all distances from 60 m to the marathon

- Published: 2026-11-11 03:06 UTC
- Section: Life & Health › Sport & health
- Tags: gap between male and female runners, elite running performance, women's running records, marathon pace, middle-distance running, Scientific Reports, Tommaso Jucker, World Athletics data
- URL: https://realtech.media/news/rt-6e691f2889f8d8a58d82b17d_bristol_study_elite/

**A Scientific Reports analysis of 13,094 elite results from 2001–2025 found the gap narrowed from 13.2% to 11.9%, with the largest gains at middle and long distances.**

![Bristol study: elite women narrowed the gap to men in running at all distances from 60 m to the marathon](https://realtech.media/media/2026/11/53e5d56b2c91d61a.webp)
*news-medical.net*

Tommaso Jucker of the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, UK, analysed elite running results from 2001 to 2025. According to the paper in Scientific Reports, published on nature.com, women continued to close the gap on men at all distances from 60 m to the marathon [1]. The prevailing view had been that the gap stabilised toward the end of the 20th century and has since remained unchanged [1].

## Data and method

The study used officially ratified race results from the World Athletics website, retrieved on 21 December 2025. It covered 11 disciplines: sprints (60, 100, 200 and 400 m), middle distances (800, 1500 and 3000 m) and long distances (5 and 10 km, half marathon, marathon). Races were outdoor, except the indoor 60 m. The mile, hurdles, steeplechase and 2020 were excluded, which left 24 seasons.

For each event and year, each athlete's fastest annual result was kept, and the 25 best athletes of each sex were selected. The final dataset contained 13,094 performances by 3611 athletes (1966 men and 1645 women) from 971 events. Repeating the analysis with the top 10 and top 50 gave similar results.

## What changed between 2001 and 2025

Over the whole period, elite women were on average 12.6% slower than men. The gap was narrowest in the 60 m (9.2%), widened to 14.2% in the 10 km, and narrowed again in the half marathon and marathon. Between 2001 and 2025 the overall gap fell by 1.3 percentage points, from 13.2% to 11.9%.

The largest relative gains were in middle- and long-distance events. There women gained on average 3.6 seconds per kilometre relative to men, a 1.9-percentage-point reduction in the gap [1]. The spread between the smallest and largest gaps narrowed from 5.6 to 4.6 percentage points, and the widest gap moved from the 10 km to the 800 m.

Men also improved in all 11 disciplines, cutting average pace by 2.2 seconds per kilometre. Their largest gains, 6.0–6.2 seconds per kilometre, came in the half marathon and marathon. Among leading women, average pace improved by 4.5 seconds per kilometre; in the half marathon and marathon it fell by 10.3–12.6 seconds per kilometre, or 5.0–6.3%. Improvements were broadly linear for both sexes, with no clear plateaus. The author notes that whether women will one day run faster than men remains an open question [1].

## Sources

1. [nature.com](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-79043-7)
2. [news-medical.net](https://www.news-medical.net/news/20261110/The-gap-between-male-and-female-runners-is-shrinking-Whats-driving-it.aspx)

---

Source: RealTech, realtech.media — https://realtech.media/news/rt-6e691f2889f8d8a58d82b17d_bristol_study_elite/