World-class female skiers beat national-class women on VO2peak (~10% DIA, ~7% DP) and 3-min test distance (6-7%), not on efficiency
And they trained ~120 h more over May-October
Participants
n=12 female cross-country skiers: the world's six highest-ranked (world class, WC) and six national-class (NC) competitors.
Protocol
Design: cross-sectional comparison of the world's six highest-ranked female cross-country skiers with six national-class competitors (from the abstract)
Tested immediately before the competition season: three 5-min submaximal roller-ski treadmill stages (oxygen cost), then a 3-min self-paced performance test in both double poling (DP) and diagonal stride (DIA); training over the preceding 6 months from diaries.
Key Findings
No group difference in oxygen cost or gross efficiency at the submaximal speeds — efficiency did not separate the world's best women from national-class women.
WC skiers covered 6-7% longer distances in the 3-min tests and had average VO2peak of ~70 (DIA) and ~65 (DP) mL/min/kg, 10% and 7% higher than NC (all P < 0.05).
Accumulated oxygen deficit did not differ between groups — the anaerobic component was not the differentiator.
Training, May to October: WC 532 ± 73 h (270 ± 26 sessions) vs NC 411 ± 62 h (240 ± 27 sessions). WC did 26% more low-intensity training and almost twice as much moderate-intensity endurance and speed training (all P < 0.05).
Practical Application
In 12 female skiers (six world-class vs six national-class), the world-class women had ~10% (DIA) / ~7% (DP) higher VO2peak and covered 6-7% more distance in 3-min tests, with no difference in gross efficiency or accumulated O2 deficit — at the top of women's skiing the separator is a high oxygen uptake usable across techniques, not economy.
The training benchmark for women aiming for medals: ~530 h over May-October with more low-intensity volume and roughly double the moderate-intensity work of national-class peers.
Inference, not tested: the entry previously framed this as a women-vs-men upper-body-power comparison; that is not what this paper measured. Male-female comparisons and the upper-body contribution to double poling belong to other sources (mechanism in REF-645).
Limitations
Cross-sectional elite cohort; describes correlates and group differences, not an individual's trainable ceiling.
n=12 (six per group); training data are self-reported diaries.
Whether the DP VO2peak difference reflects upper-body capacity specifically is not resolved by this design.
How this entry was checked and changed
Content correction 2026-09-27
Entry claimed the study compared elite women with elite men and that the gap was "driven largely by upper-body power, greatest in double poling" -> the abstract compares world-class women with national-class women; no men, no upper-body-power measure.
Entry claimed the best women "pair high VO2max with high efficiency" -> abstract: no difference in oxygen cost or gross efficiency between groups; the difference was VO2peak (10% DIA / 7% DP), 3-min distance (6-7%) and training volume (532 vs 411 h).
Added Participants (n=12) and the training benchmarks from the abstract; removed cross-reference to REF-571 (menstrual-cycle strength paper, not relevant).
2026-09-28: added Protocol from the abstract (Europe PMC/PubMed PMID 26741124).
2026-09-28: PMID 26808442 belonged to an unrelated paper; replaced with 26741124, the PubMed record for this entry's own DOI.