Back in 2015, a trio of scientists led by Marquette University’s Sandra Hunter, one of the world’s leading experts on male-female performance differences, wrote a paper in the Journal of Applied Physiology titled “The Two-Hour Marathon: What’s the Equivalent for Women?” The comparable barrier, they concluded, had already been broken by Paula Radcliffe’s 2003 world record of 2:15:25.
Since 2015, the men’s record has dropped by 1.9 percent to 2:00:35 (with Eliud Kipchoge also notching an unofficial 1:59:41 in a record-ineligible exhibition race). The women’s record, after Ruth Chepngetich’s Chicago Marathon win earlier this month, has now dropped by a dizzying 4.0 percent to 2:09:56. The claim that Radcliffe had run the equivalent of sub-2:00 was debatable; the claim that Chepngetich has done so is not. This is the greatest marathon performance in history by virtually all metrics—and it has stirred up a hornet’s nest of reactions.
To be a fan of endurance sports in the modern era is to live with a baseline level of skepticism. We know that top athletes sometimes dope, because they’re sometimes…
