Women Playing Catch-up

Continuing our theme of the increase in standards and focusing on the long course distance events, you can see that the men improved around 2% whereas the women's 400, 800 and 1,500 only moved around 1%. These both sound small amounts but its around 18 seconds for the men's 1,500 so it's not to be sneezed at. Data source is swimnews.


The women's standard used for the FINA2004 points is actually less than 0.5% faster than it would have been in 1988 but don't hold your breath thinking its going to stay that way. The current base 400m time of 4:05.64 would have been 4:04.61 if taken at end 2007 and 4:04.37 if updated with February's swim by Katie Hoff when she missed the world record by 0.07 seconds.

Expect the women's distance events to show the same change the men showed from 1992 onwards; remember the men's had been stagnant since the high-point of 1,500 racing, the Montreal Olympic final of 1976