Sex Difference in Draft-Legal Ultra-Distance Events - A Comparison between Ultra-Swimming and Ultra-Cycling It is well known that men are faster than women.As a rule, sports and routes were examined where drafting was not possible resp.was forbidden. We now have a swimming competition (16 km swimming in the ‘Faros Swim Marathon’) and a wheel race (24-hour wheel race) examined in which the women will be able to swim behind the men to swim resp.to drive.It can be assumed that the difference between the sexes becomes smaller.Over the years, women in swimming competition could reduce the difference from 5.3% to 1.0%. When cycling, the difference dropped from 33.3% to 10.9%.If you compare the fastest athletes, the difference in swimming was 1.5% and 26.4% in cycling.
If one compares these gender differences with previous results, significant differences are both for swimming as well as for cycling. All numbers can be found under https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27080464/