About as "scientific" as Al Gore's predictions wrote:
(Published in Sports Science News, 1997)
It's well known that top female runners have been catching up on their male counterparts. Some authors have even suggested that women might one day run as fast as men. For example, Ward and Whipp (1992) predicted that the men's and women's marathon world records would be equal by 1998 and that women record holders would catch up with men in shorter distances early in the 21st century. The American public agrees: a pre-Olympic poll of 1,000 adults last May found that 66 percent of Americans believe "the day is coming when top female athletes will beat top males at the highest competitive levels" (Tharp, 1996).
References
Dyer, K. Catching up the men. (1984). New Scientist 1415(2), 25-26.
Hill, A.V. (1925). The physiological basis of running records. Lance 2, 481.486.
Morton, R.H. (1983). The supreme runner: what evidence now? Australian Journal of Sports Sciences, 3, 7-10.
Ryder, H.W., Carr, H.J., and Herget, P. (1976). Future performance in footracing. Scientific American, 234, 108-119.
Tharp, M. (1996) Ready, Set, Go. Why we love our games. US News & World Report, July 22.
Wallechinsky, D. (1996). Sports Illustrated presents the complete book of the Summer Olympics. Boston: Little, Brown and Company
Whipp, B.J. and Ward, S.A. (1992). Will women soon outrun men? Nature., 355, 25.
The 10.49W and Jarmila's 800 world record must have fooled people because female times haven't improved one bit since this era. This era was the dirtiest in the history of female athletics, females now can only micro dose testosterone and that won't get the Flo Jo and Jarmila and Koch records off the books.