How far womens World Cup players ran in 2023 tournament
Through the month-long marathon of the women’s World Cup, players from 32 countries logged so many miles on the field that their combined efforts could cover the distance between Sydney and Seattle.
It’s an inconsequential statistic, yet a reminder of the physical load on players. Because when combined, the distance becomes enormous. Across 64 World Cup games, the players collectively traveled 8,753 miles — roughly the distance of 334 marathons, according to FIFA’s match reports.
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Nobody contributed more to the players’ total than Spain midfielder Jennifer Hermoso, who, in seven starts, covered 48.7 miles — more than the distance from Seattle to Tacoma, Wash.
Spain won its first women’s World Cup title by defeating England in Sunday’s final, and during its World Cup run, its players combined for about 507 miles — more than any other team in the tournament. If they converted their movement on the field into a roadside relay, the Spanish players could have traveled from Seattle to the Oregon-California border.
With Spain starting the journey down the Pacific coast, the distance logged by the other three semifinalists would more than reach from the California border to San Diego, where this theoretical relay would cross the water and the remaining 28 teams’ miles logged would finish covering the distance all the way to Australia, the co-host of this summer’s tournament.
Among the four teams that played seven games, runner-up England covered the least distance — but its players still logged 480 miles. The distance covered by England and Spain would nearly stretch from one of their training facilities to the other.
No team ran more in a single game than Spain, whose players combined for 93 miles against the Netherlands in its quarterfinal win that required extra time. Spain’s Teresa Abelleira covered 9.3 miles, the highest single-game mark of the tournament. Two other players, Lieke Martens and Jackie Groenen of the Netherlands, logged more than nine miles in that game for the second- and third-longest distances of the tournament.
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A player’s output usually relates to her role on the field, with versatile midfielders racking up the most miles. But a team’s distance covered per 90 minutes had no correlation with its success in the tournament.
The Philippines, which didn’t advance out of the group stage, covered the most distance (72.2 miles) every 90 minutes. Vietnam, another team that didn’t advance out of its group, tallied the fewest miles (61.5) per 90 minutes. A similar range remained as the field whittled.
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Photo illustration with pictures by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images, Tertius Pickard/AP, Alessandra Tarantino/AP, Dan Himbrechts/EPA-EFE and Marty Melville/Agence France-Presse.
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