Freestyle master’s swimming: Nationality, sex, and performance trends in World Aquatics competitions (1986–2024)

Wais Ahmad, Matthias Wilhelm, Sascha Moreitz, Marilia Santos Andrade, Pedro Forte, Arkadiusz Stanula, Pantelis T Nikolaidis, Ivan Cuk, Mabliny Thuany, Katja Weiss, Thomas Rosemann, Lee Hill, Aldo Seffrin and Beat Knechtle

PLOS ONE, 2025, vol. 20, issue 9, 1-16

Abstract: Background: In sports science, freestyle swimming has been thoroughly studied for particular performance-related factors. Nonetheless, it is unknown what countries the top freestyle swimmers are from, especially not for age group swimmers. In addition, the existing research on the performance of master freestyle swimmers has yet to confirm that male swimmers achieve faster times than their female counterparts across all age groups and distances. The current study looked into the nationalities and sexes of the top freestyle swimmers in each age group in World Aquatics competitions for the 50m, 100m, 200m, 400m, and 800m events from 1986 to 2024. Methods: The data (derived from (www.worldaquatics.com/masters/archives/masters-archives) were presented using mean, standard deviation, maximum and minimum values, and/or confidence intervals. The year of competition, age, age group, stroke, distance, and first and last names of each swimmer were noted. The nations were then divided into six groups: one group comprising all other countries and the top five nations with the greatest number of appearances in the top 10 fastest freestyle swimming times by distance each year. Results: In freestyle swimming, most swimmers (30.6%) competed in the 50m event (n = 25,094, 10,909 female and 14,185 male), followed by the 100m event (25.6%, n = 20,961, 8,796 female and 12,165 male), the 200m event (17.4%, n = 14,309, 6,729 female and 7,580 male), the 400m event (13.4%, n = 10,956, 5,363 female and 5,593 male), and the 800m event (12.6%, n = 10,317, 5,179 female and 5,138 male). The results from the generalized linear models indicate that sex, age group, and the interaction between sex and age group all had significant effects on the 50m, 100m, 200m, 400m, and 800m races. Specifically, for the 50m races, the effect of sex was significant (x2 (1) = 3451.941, p

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0332040

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