Male swimmers cross the English Channel faster than female swimmers Between 1875 and 2011, 1,606 swimmer (1,120 men and 486 women) have successfully passed through the sleeve channel between Dover and Calais.If you compare the swimming times of all women (796.3 ± 188.7 min) with the floating times of all men (815.4 ± 169.4 min), no difference was present. The fastest float time until the end of 2011 was 417 min for men and 445 min for women with a difference of 6.7%.If you take the three fastest times for men and women so far, there is a difference of 8.9 ± 2.3%. In the last 36 years, at least three men and three women have passed through the channel per year.The time of men (564.3 ± 63.8 min) was 12.5 ± 9.6% faster than the time of women (602.1 ± 58.7 min) and did not change over the years.
Thus, the men in average were ~ 12% faster than the women during the past 40 years. All details can be found under https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23121394/