How has it changed in the 30 years since its debut as an Olympic event?

hen the women’s marathon was voted into the 1984 Los Angeles OlymW pics, it was one of the most widely celebrated program additions in the

history of the modern Olympic Games. Fittingly, this was a result of the strong popularity of marathon racing that had been developing for both sexes since the late 1970s. Joan Benoit’s never-to-be-forgotten gold-medal Olympic mark (2:24:52) stood for 28 years to the day until Tiki Gelana of Ethiopia broke it at the London Games (2:23:07). In the 30 years since the event’s Los Angeles debut, record numbers of women from an increasing geographic area have tackled the distance. Huge sums of prize money, appearance fees, and endorsements are now available to top female marathoners (the winner of the Dubai Marathon netted $200,000 in prize money alone this year, as an example). Not surprisingly, factors such as these have resulted in faster times and a continually expanding depth of high-quality performances.

But what else has changed over the past three decades? How has the women’s marathon evolved on a global scale? How does the current US women’s marathon scene compare to the early years? What other interesting details emerge when looking closer at the historical data? We seek to answer such questions, along with several others, using data and lists from the International Association of Athletics Federation, Association of Road Racing Statisticians, Track & Field News, and David Martin (emeritus Association of International Marathons & Distance Races statistician) to analyze the progression of the women’s marathon since 1984.

Global analysis

The chronological progression of the women’s fastest annual marathon performances is shown in figure 1, along with the number of sub-2:25:00 and sub2:20:00 performances each year since 1984. For the majority of the first decade after the Los Angeles Olympics, women running a sub-2:30:00 marathon were considered world class and were firmly notched inside the top 25 in the world. Nowadays, a sub-2:25:00 marathon is needed to achieve the same recognition.

FIGURE 1: Women’s Marathon, 1984-2013

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ames of Sub-2:2 fame # of Sub-2:20 Fastest Annual Performances

Evidence for this shift can be quickly gleaned from the graph from the large growth in the number of high-quality performances in recent years. Whereas only two sub-2:25:00 marathons were run in 1984, the mark was bested 39 times in 2013 and an even more impressive 61 times in the Olympic year of 2012. In fact, it took more than two decades (1984-2005) for women to chalk up as many sub-2:25:00 marathons (143) as the number that have been run in just the past three years! This remarkable recent depth at the 2:25:00 level also translates to the even faster “super-elite” benchmark of 2:20:00. Naoko Takahashi of Japan first dipped under this barrier at the Berlin Marathon in 2001, and since then 24 additional sub-2:20:00 performances have been recorded. Almost half (40 percent, or 10) of these performances have come in the last three years.

The dramatic rise in the number of high-quality marathon performances from women in recent years hasn’t coincided with an expected drop in world-leading times however. A quick glance at the trend for fastest annual finishing times (gray line in figure 1) looks essentially horizontal for the past decade (2004-2013), and in reality, the net change during this period has been an increase of 33 seconds! (As a comparison, the men’s fastest annual marathon performances have experienced a net decrease of 171 seconds during the same timeframe.) Why does the women’s marathon seem to have reached a plateau? One possible reason could be that no obvious whole-number barrier (like the sub-two-hour barrier for the men) or equivalent allure, fame, and monetary reward exists for women. Could Paula Radcliffe’s mixed-race world record of 2:15:25 or even her female-only world record of 2:17:18 be so untouchable that women are psychologically unprepared to make a serious run for a new mark? Cultural, social, and athletic pressures are also likely playing a part, providing alternative options (more Olympic-distance

events available to women, other professional sports opportunities, high-paying jobs, marriage, motherhood, and so forth) that may pull the best women away from competitive distance running before their potential is fully realized. Whatever the reasons, only time will tell when we start to see world-leading times drop in the women’s marathon, but it appears the foundation is in place (and building) to support such a trend, as shown by the increased depth of high-quality performances.

So which countries can currently lay claim to producing the fastest (and most) female marathoners, and how has the geographical representation changed since the early days? We’ve chosen to assess national “strength” in the marathon by taking the yearly top 100 runners worldwide and assigning a point value from 100 to one, with 100 points awarded to the fastest woman and decreasing to one point for the 100th fastest. The point totals are summed for each nation and a count of athletes is also provided to give a sense of depth. We feel that this method provides a true picture of a country’s relative global rank at the marathon distance. For visual simplicity, only four countries are shown in figure 2, which gives a quick glimpse of the rise and fall of the leading marathon nations during the three-decade span since 1984.

Many running fans are likely able to guess the current top one or two nations considering the incredible male dominance at the distance by East African countries of late. You would of course be right if Ethiopia and Kenya were on your list, but these two nations have reigned supreme only in the most recent decade. Using figure 2 as a reference, the USA led the charge in the global women’s marathon movement when it first gained a head of steam in the early 1970s. As a result, the USA was the world’s strongest marathoning nation for the first 10-year period after the Los Angeles Games. By a huge margin, the USA had far more top marathon runners than the next two or three countries combined. Nowadays, however, we find that in terms of competing in top-level marathons worldwide, the United States is almost a nonfactor. Japanese women came onto the scene in large numbers in the late 1980s and bettered all others during the middle era of

FIGURE 2: National Strength in the Marathon, 1984-2013

women’s marathon from 1992 to 2006. This small yet densely populated nation with a rich tradition of distance running is the only country during the past 30 years to place at least one athlete on the list of the world’s top 100 marathoners every year. No other nation can claim the same feat. Although Japan’s strength and worldwide success have fallen off in recent years, it has still managed to consistently produce very good female marathoners (eight women were ranked in the top 100 in 2013), whereas the USA has struggled to keep pace for quite some time (one in the top 100 in 2013 and an average of three women ranked in the top 100 over the past 20 years). Deena Drossin Kastor is obviously an exception to this recent trend, winning a bronze medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics and delivering the fastest time in the world in 2006 (2:19:36).

Kenyan women began to display their abilities at the marathon distance in the late 1990s and early 2000s (several years after their male countrymen). However, they have been surpassed recently by Ethiopia, a neighboring country that has delivered a larger number of talented female marathoners to the world stage in the past five years. This statement may seem surprising since Kenyan women possessed twice as many (12) of the top-20 fastest marathon times in the world last year compared with six for Ethiopia. The apparent discrepancy is explained by the fact that Ethiopia’s female talent pool is composed of 32 runners among the top 100 compared with only 19 for Kenya.

Digging a little deeper into the recent African success at the distance, what percentage of all sub-2:25:00 marathons were run last year by Ethiopian and Kenyan women? Of the 39 performances recorded in 2013, the two countries accounted for a staggering 79 percent of them (see figure 3). This dominance will likely continue in view of the incredible prowess of their male marathoning compatriots in recent years.

FIGURE 3: ETH & KEN, as a % Total of all Sub-2:25 Marathons Run,

2009-2013 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0%

2010 2011 2012 2013 BETH BKEN

FIGURE 4: National Strength of Women’s Marathon Based on Population Size, 2009-2013

© Population size (estimated pop. numbers are shown below bubbles)

B Relative stength of nation divided by population size (strengths are averaged over past 5 years, ‘09-’13)

wb bh zB

ETH KEN @: @ mM 127M 110M 95m 45m

Another interesting way to look at national strength is to use a per capita approach. Thus, figure 4 represents the current top marathon nations (from 2009-2013) when relative strength is adjusted by the number of inhabitants. The extraordinary mastery of long-distance running by Ethiopian and Kenyan athletes really comes to light when population size is taken into consideration. Their dominance is truly unmatched. Conversely, the contemporary weakness of the USA and China quickly becomes apparent. With an enormous pool of 1.4 billion people, China should theoretically be producing far more world-class marathoners than it currently does. The same can be said for the United States. Both countries likely have a larger number of untapped high-level female marathon talent residing inside their immense borders that, for various reasons, isn’t being realized (e.g., alternative athletic, cultural, and social options).

Domestic analysis

And so, how has the status of women’s marathon running in America changed over the past 30 years since Benoit’s victory in Los Angeles? Are we faster? Are we more prolific? Are we unique? Just where are we?

Figure 5 on the next page puts into historical perspective the fastest annual US performances (solid orange line) compared to the fastest annual world performances (solid blue line). In addition, we show the average finishing time of the top 10 female marathoners each year for the two segments (represented by dotted lines). Historically, US marathon performances have averaged 4-6 percent slower than the rest of the world, which equates to a time difference of about six to eight

FIGURE 5: Women’s Marathon: World’s Best vs USA’s Best, 1984-2013

minutes. The smallest gap between the top 10 annual US and world performances over the 30-year period occurred in the first decade after the 1984 Olympics. This is largely attributable to the enormous popularity of the event in the United States, increased corporate funding, an increase in sport-science knowledge, and a large number of competitive opportunities. After a lackluster middle era from roughly 1997-2008 (with the exception of 2006), recent years have seen America’s best distance runners narrow the gap slightly on the rest of the world. We would be remiss to not mention the few time points on the graph when the solid lines do in fact touch one another (1984, 1985, 2006). Joan Benoit Samuelson and Deena Drossin Kastor are responsible for these occurrences. They are undeniably the two most talented marathon runners in US history, and in current times they would still be running toe-to-toe with the world’s best. Deena’s PR of 2:19:36 would have been world leading in 2013 while Joan’s 2:21:21 would have placed her just outside the top five.

The orange bars in figure 5 represent the number of American women ranked in the world’s top 100. Even though the USA was the strongest marathoning nation for the majority of the first 10 years after Los Angeles, a noticeable decline in the country’s depth was taking place. This weakening was primarily due to a greater pool of women who began running marathons across the globe, thus diluting the USA’s dominance and penetration in the event. There has been a general leveling off since then, with an average of only three American women per year ranked in the top 100 worldwide during the past 20 years.

Figure 6 provides an additional view of the USA’s 30-year progression in the women’s marathon, with a primary focus on the number of athletes posting sub2:35:00 and sub-2:30:00 performances throughout the span. An astute reader is able to pick up on the ebb and flow of high-quality performances that typically

FIGURE 6: Women’s Marathon in the USA, 1984-2013 250,00 2 2045,00 18 24000

2:35:00

2:30:00 /

2:25:00 3 & Ss

2:20:00

Finishing Time \

205:00

2:10:00

2:05:00

a= — =. — °

fs Sub-2:30 0 er Sub-235

Yearly Leaders

occurs every four years in concert with each Olympic Games. But 2007 is an anomaly, when no American was able to produce a sub-2:30 or sub-2:35 marathon or be ranked anywhere in the top 100 worldwide. From 2008 and onward, US women have been on a rebound and are displaying the greatest depth of female marathon talent our country has ever seen. Tracking the progression of yearly leaders (solid orange line) doesn’t necessarily point to this conclusion because the fastest finishing time during the most recent six-year period (2:22:38) isn’t speedier than in previous years. However, when the number of high-quality performances and top-10 average finishing times is taken into account, a different picture emerges. More US women are now running sub-2:30:00 and sub-2:35:00 marathons, and for the first time in the 30-year history of the event, the top-10 average finishing time has dipped under the 2:30:00 mark (2:29:24 in 2011 and 2:28:23 in 2012). This recent US improvement at the distance is somewhat muted by the fact that the rest of the world (primarily Kenya and Ethiopia) has also gotten better at running marathons, but, we hope, American women will continue to make progress.

Further evidence to support the recent positive trend in both the quality and the number of US long-distance runners is shown in figure 7, which displays performance data from all eight US Olympic Marathon Trials. America’s early strength in the event is demonstrated by the results of the first Trials race, which was held in Olympia, Washington. A whopping 109 women completed the race faster than 2:50:00. This number was not reached again until the 2012 selection race in Houston, Texas, where 120 women finished under the 2:50:00 mark and five women broke 2:30:00.

FIGURE 7: US Olympic Team Trials: Women’s Marathon (1984-2012) # of Sub-2:50, Sub-2:40 and Sub-2:30 Performances

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o 81 2 a = 80 71 = 61 = 60 e 46 a4 = 41 = 40 31

ee 17 fo 20 20 14 . 5 1 1 3 1 o 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012

@Sub-2:50 @Sub-2:40 mSub-2:30

Questions for the future

In summary, more women are now running fast marathons on both a global and US scale than since the event was added to the Olympic program in 1984, and the depth of high-quality talent continues to grow. Similar to the men’s marathon, two countries, Ethiopia and Kenya, currently stand out dramatically from the rest of the world and account for 70-80 percent of all world-class (sub-2:25:00) marathons run by women in recent years. Interestingly, a drop in the fastest annual finishing times hasn’t coincided with the increased talent pool, and world-best marks have been mostly static for a decade.

Turning attention inward, the US women were world leaders early in the evolution of the marathon event yet now struggle to make a small impact on the world front. But some hope may be on the horizon. It appears that female American long-distance runners are growing in both numbers and quality.

Many challenging questions still remain concerning the women’s marathon. A few include: How long can the incredible dominance of Kenya and Ethiopia continue? When will we start to see Paula Radcliffe’s record(s) challenged? What will it take for the United States to gain traction on the global marathon scene?

As excellence tends to drive the creation of more excellence, some of these answers will, we hope, become evident in the not-too-distant future. Mp