According to Wiki, the male record for swimming the English Channel is far ahead of the female record – and likewise for swimming the English Channel two ways, and likewise for swimming the English Channel three ways.
That said, though, open water swimming is definitely a sport in which the male/female performance differential is much less pronounced than in many other sports; and overall, evaluated across all participant skill levels, the advantage might even be in favor of women. The buoyancy and insulation afforded by women’s greater bodyfat percentage, which is pretty much useless in all other athletic contexts except the hypothetical sport of competitive childbearing, significantly counteract the disadvantages of smaller size and less muscle mass when it comes to swimming.
Your link gives only qualified support to this statement. In particular, it notes that the cases where women have outperformed men are restricted to certain events, and refer to the average times of women vs. men entered in these events. It further notes that in some cases there has been a considerable difference in the average age of female vs. male swimmers.
Doing so faster isn’t an endurance feat. And men as I understand it are also more likely than women to simply die in the attempt. The same goes with the examples of surviving cold and starvation; it’s not that women perform better under such conditions, but that they are more likely to survive them at all.
Reference the RAAM (Bicycle race across America from California to Maryland):
http://www.raceacrossamerica.org/raam/rcrank.php?s_N_category_group=1&s_N_Race_ID=1&s_N_Year_ID=34
This is the most insane, outrageous test of strength and endurance. Yet the male arrived at the goal more than 2 days ahead of the first female. More than 2 days!
The participants are all nuts but the results tell you something.
So the marathon runner-up demonstrated endurance, but the winner didn’t??
Well yeah, the runner up was running for longer!
I’m an endurance champion. I’m currently on my 8th year of running a marathon.
Doesn’t the Tampa Bay data provided in that link straight out contradict the text of the article? Men with an average age of 41 years are on average 23 minutes faster than women with an average age of 33 years. In fact, skimming through the results, it seems that men are significantly faster than women in all endurance swimming races apart from a single race in New York. What am I missing? The article text makes it sound like women are dominating men in these events, whereas they are still being left behind in the vast majority of them?
The article also spells out that the average men’s time is better when swimming from Catalina to the mainland, but the average women’s time is better when swimming from the mainland to Catalina.
I don’t know what that means.
So strength became defined as endurance…and then endurance became defined as not any sort of superior physical performance over a long period of time (such as a marathon) but as simply the ability to survive longer without food?
Aren’t we now just talking about (at least it’s one very important factor) the individual’s fat reserves prior to starvation? And if so, haven’t we gotten an awfully long way from any reasonable definition of “strength”? I mean, an obese person would no doubt outlast an olympic wrestler in a starvation contest, but do you look at an obese person and marvel at their “strength”?
Catalina is an island off the coast of California. When the times of all the men swimming from the island to the California coast are added together and divided by … wait, are you sure you don’t understand what it means?
I believe the question is why men would be faster one way and women the other and whether this speaks to any sort of intrinsic endurance or just variation in the participants for the race. A mean for this really doesn’t say too much in my opinion. A few slow stragglers for either sex could have a large influence on the average.
Heh. No, I mean I don’t know why the men do better than women when they’re all swimming in one direction and the women do better than the men when they’re all swimming in the other direction.
My first thought was currents somehow favored one sex over the other, but seeing that they just took the average of everyone in the races… probably just a different mix of people. A few slow people who barely made it in swaying the average.
Running and swimming did not originate as a sport. It was, and is, a survival technique.
Baseball is a sport. Weight lifting is arguably a sport, wrestling is a sport, etc.
The same for endurance running. Faster is better but doesn’t prove stronger endurance. However, on average, women runners are in better shape and recover faster when they cross the finish line at endurance events.
Additional reply for you mister W:
Our best endurance activity is putting up with men’s bragging about their strength.
:D:D;)
No, it’s the statement itself that was qualified. I didn’t say that women historically outperformed men in most such events, I just pointed out that that was true in various events, such as the ones so described in the link.
So these are not included among “most, if not all, sports” ?
Hmm, good point. I guess that is where “most” comes in.