Sports: Why women are breaking men’s endurance records

Sophie Woods is not the first woman to break a men’s record in endurance sport – Image: Zoe Salt

New Zealand runner Sophie Woods has completed the 2,000-kilometer sports tournament Via Alpina faster even than the fastest-ever man. We explain why she is not the only woman breaking men’s records in extreme sports.

Woods, who competes under her maiden name, Sophie Grant, recently accomplished something truly remarkable.

Running for 29 days across the Alps, from Trieste to Monaco, Woods covered around 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) while climbing a total of more than 100,000 meters (328,083 feet) – on an average of three to four hours of sleep per night.

This made her the fastest person ever to complete the Via Alpina. The 42-year-old New Zealand ultra-runner finished the route more than seven days faster than the fastest man ever to do so.

“It gives me goosebumps thinking about it, to take the overall record is amazing,” Woods told us.

“I was there for the adventure. I didn’t really want to be running for longer than a month, that was enough.”

Sports: The longer the distance, the smaller the gender gap

Woods is not the only woman to have broken a men’s record in endurance sports in recent years.

In 2026, Rachel Entrekin won the Cocodona 250, a race covering roughly 400 kilometers in the United States, setting a new overall course record.

A year earlier, Tara Dower ran the Long Trail in Vermont. a distance of about 440 kilometers, in 3 days, 18 hours, and 29 minutes, beating the previous men’s record by 2 hours and 40 minutes.

In 2019, Germany‘s Fiona Kolbinger became the first woman to win the Transcontinental Race. Cycling nearly 4,000 kilometers across Europe, she finished just under eight hours ahead of the second-placed male rider. That same year, Jasmin Paris became the first woman to win the 430-kilometer Spine Race in Great Britain, shattering the previous course record by more than 12 hours.

A comprehensive analysis by RunRepeat and the International Association of Ultrarunners examined over five million results from more than 15,000 ultramarathons. The findings showed that the longer the distance, the closer women came, on average, to matching men’s times.

In 2019, Fiona Kolbinger became the first woman to win the Transcontinental Race – Image: Mateusz Birecki/IMAGO

In the events analyzed, on average, the men were still 11.1% faster. At the 100-mile mark, the gap narrowed to just 0.25%. At distances exceeding 195 miles, the women were on average 0.6% faster.

‘We’re good at solving problems’

So why are women able to keep pace—or better—when the physical demands increase?

Certain physiological factors may play a role. On average, women possess a higher proportion of fatigue-resistant Type I muscle fibers and rely relatively more on fat as an energy source during endurance activities.

The advantages men typically enjoy—such as greater muscle mass and higher maximal oxygen uptake—may be less decisive in ultra-long events than in shorter races.

“Probably we are better at burning fat, and therefore it makes us able to go longer,” Woods said – before pointing to other possible factors.

“I think we’re good at putting our egos aside. And I think we’re good at solving problems.”

Competing in an ultramarathon is about much more than who can run the fastest. There are key decisions to be made about sleep, nutrition and physical pain. That’s where her team comes in.

“I just put my life in their hands,” she said.

“You kind of control everything you can and then you just throw it into chaos and see what comes out in the wash.”

Extreme sports: As little as 90 minutes of sleep, 7,000 calories a day

The extreme physical strain was evident in her sleeping patterns – towards the end, she was sleeping as little as 90 minutes a night. When she simply couldn’t go any further, she would lie down right next to the trail.

“You just curl up on the side in a little mossy glen and hope that no one thinks you’ve died,” she said.

“The sleep deprivation was one of the hardest parts of the whole thing.”

Her alarm would often go off again as early as three in the morning.

Sophie Woods broke both the women’s and men’s records on the Via Alpina – Image: Ulrich Wagner/IMAGO

At the same time, maintaining her physical energy was a huge problem, with her team estimating that she was consuming between 6,000 and 7,000 calories a day – through sports drinks, soft drinks, as burritos, falafel wraps, sandwiches, pasta, and McDonald’s food. She ate much of this while on the move.

In the Dolomites, heat and pain added to the challenge.

“I bawled my eyes out in the Dolomites,” she said.

“I was really hot. I was really sore. I was really swollen. I was shuffling along and I was just like: I don’t know if I can do this.”

Despite it all, she carried on.

Women long neglected in sports research

Despite setting the record, Woods wonders what she and other women could achieve if their bodies were studied as thoroughly as men’s.

“As a woman, you need to be very careful when you read these studies to actually see who they are studying, because often it will be 10 male cyclists,” Woods said.

“We have just been left behind in all of the research for decades,” she said.

“As women, we are fighting for crumbs in the sporting world. We are fighting for more coverage, we are fighting for more research, we are fighting for more sponsorship.”

The fact that several individual men’s records have been broken by women doesn’t mean that women are inherently better endurance athletes than men. Men still hold many records and are, on average, significantly faster over shorter distances.

However, in an interview with the BBC, sports physiologist Nicholas Tiller described very long endurance events as “the great equaliser.”

Woods is simply not interested in who holds the advantage on paper.

“I think the bravest thing to do is to try,” she said.

“Try the scary thing. It doesn’t matter what happens in the end because at least you’ve tried.”

DW.com/NAN 24-08-26

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