Sprinting to the top: comparing quality of distance variety and specialization between swimmers and runners.

Objectives: To compare performance progression and variety in race distances of comparable lengths (timewise) between pool swimming and track running. Quality of within-sport variety was determined as the performance differences between individual athletes' main and secondary race distances across (top-) elite and (highly-) trained swimmers and runners.

Methods: A total of 3,827,947 race times were used to calculate performance points (race times relative to the world record) for freestyle swimmers ( = 12,588 males and  = 7,561 females) and track runners ( = 9,230 males and  = 5,841 females).