Gender gap between elite runners continues to shrink in the 21 ^st century

In 1992 a provocative paper extrapolated from historical trends in world record performances to predict that women would soon run faster than men across a whole range of distances ¹ . Since then, however, the consensus has been that the gap between male and female runners stabilised towards the end of the 20 ^th century and has since remained unchanged ^2,3 . Here I analyse running performances by elite athletes since 2001 to show that contrary to this widely held belief, women have in fact continued to close the gap on men across all distances from 60 m to the marathon. Women made the biggest gains relative to men in middle and long-distance running disciplines, and this occurred despite the fact that men too have continued to improve significantly in these events over the past 25 years. The jury is still out there as to whether women will one day run faster than men, but what does appear more certain is that many of the most memorable races of the coming decades will be run by women.