Attempting to explain why the USA's elite, female swimmers are improving more slowly than males after the COVID-19 pandemic

The purpose of this study is to measure how performances of elite US swimmers have fared since 2021, when the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic started to subside in the United States. Findings suggest females' rate of improvement has slowed relative to that of male swimmers since the pandemic. This change is an about face from improvement rates in the years before the pandemic, with the largest share of the reduction occurring among the lower ranked set of elite female swimmers. Attempts are made to explain these relatively lower improvement rates with swimmers' ages, differences in heights, which might leverage the ability to use new racing techniques, and exposure to symptoms related to long COVID. These covariates contain little in the way of explanatory power, leaving females' slower rates of improvement in the current era a mystery that might be solved with future paths of research that focus on equity to innovations of the sport or effects specific to strokes or events.