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From: gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Fat Swimmers
Message-ID: <78300004@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 4 Oct 88 19:03:00 GMT
Lines: 15
Nf-ID: #N:p.cs.uiuc.edu:78300004:000:594
Nf-From: p.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Oct  4 14:03:00 1988


Someone in soc.women brought up an interesting question:

"In general, world-class swimmers have a higher percentage of body fat
than almost every other type of endurance athlete.  Why is this?"

I seem to remember reading a table that said world-class marathoners
average 8.5% body fat, and swimmers average 12+% bodyfat.  Does
someone know the REAL (i.e. researched/verified/published) answer to
this question?


Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801      
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP: {uunet,ihnp4,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies