BMIs of Champions (Women's Edition)

Champion women come in all shapes and sizes.

Monday, June 3, 2013, 12:00 am

A few weeks ago we published a post that looked at the body mass index of male Olympic gold medalists from various sports. Pretty much all the comments we received asked the same question, “What about the women?”

So here we look at the women.


The BMIs of women athletes follow the same general pattern as men. Not surprisingly, athletes from strength sports tend to have high BMIs, while those in endurance sports have low BMIs. Those in sports that require bursts of speed fall somewhere in the middle.

As with the men, the athlete with the highest BMI was a weightlifter (China’s Zhou Lulu at 5’9” 290 lb.). And as with the men, the leanest athlete was a race walker (Russia’s Elena Lashmanova at 5’7” 110 lb.).

For both men and women, most of the runners fell within the “Normal Weight” range of 20-25 defined by the Center for Disease Control. Sprinters and hurdlers generally have higher BMIs than distance runners.

Except for Zhou Lulu, the women had lower BMIs than their male counterparts in every sport. Women generally cannot put on as much muscle mass as men. Most of these women are muscular, but not mountains of muscle.

While only two men fell into the “Underweight” category (the marathoner and a race walker), nine of the women did. These included runners at the 1500m, 5000m, and 10,000m distances, as well athletes from the performance sports of diving, figure skating, and gymnastics.

As with the men, the heaviest athlete (Zhou Lulu) weighed three times as much as the lightest (the 90-pound gymnast Gabby Douglas).

Champions come in all shapes and sizes. Their bodies are tools optimized for particular athletic tasks. People sometimes bristle at the CDC’s category labels “Overweight” and “Underweight” because they interpret those words to mean “Too Fat” and “Too Skinny.” It’s possible to fall into those categories and still be extraordinarily fit.

Here’s the list.

Obese (30 or higher)
Zhou Lulu (weight lifting) 42.8
Valerie Adams (shot put) 31.6

Overweight (25-29.9)
Natalia Vorobieva (wrestling) 27.5
Sandra Perkovic (discus) 25.8

Normal Weight (18.5-24.9)
Seimone Augustus (basketball) 24.3
Claressa Shields (boxing) 23.7
Lindsey Vonn (downhill skiing) 23.7
Tatyana Lysenko (hammer throw) 23.4
Christie Rampone (soccer) 23.0
Serena Williams (tennis) 22.9
Yuliya Zaripova (3000m steeplechase) 22.7
Barbora Spotakova (javelin) 22.4
Sally Pearson (100m hurdles) 21.8
Missy Franklin (swimming) 21.8
Natalya Antyukh (400m hurdles) 21.8
Jessica Ennis (heptathlon) 21.6
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (100m) 21.5
Brittney Reese (long jump) 21.3
Marianne Vos (bicycling) 21.0
Sanya Richards-Ross (400m) 20.8
Maartje Paumen (field hockey) 20.7
Mariya Savinova (800m) 20.3
Justyna Kowalczyk (cross country skiing) 19.8
Allyson Felix (200m) 19.5
Nicola Spirig (triathlon) 19.5
Jenn Suhr (pole vault) 19.1
Olga Rypakova (triple jump) 19.0
Martina Sáblíková (speed skating) 18.8

Underweight (below 18.5)
Tirunesh Dibaba (10,000m) 18.4
Chen Ruolin (diving) 18.3
Gabby Douglas (gymnastics) 18.2
Kim Yu-Na (figure skating) 17.8
Aslı Çakır Alptekin (1500m) 17.8
Anna Chicherova (high jump) 17.6
Meseret Defar (5000m) 17.6
Tiki Gelana (marathon) 17.6
Elena Lashmanova (20km walk) 17.2