Swimming at the 1972 Summer Olympics – Men's 200 metre individual medley
The men's 200 metre individual medley event at the 1972 Olympic Games took place September 3. This swimming event used medley swimming. Because an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, this race consisted of four lengths of the pool. The first length was swum using the butterfly stroke, the second with the backstroke, the third length in breaststroke, and the fourth freestyle. Unlike other events using freestyle, swimmers could not use butterfly, backstroke, or breaststroke for the freestyle leg; most swimmers use the front crawl in freestyle events anyway.Medalists
Results
Heats
Heat 1
| Rank | Athlete | Country | Time | Notes |
| 1 | Wolfram Sperling | | 2:12.87 | |
| 2 | Thomas Aretz | | 2:13.19 | |
| 3 | Bertram Türpe | | 2:16.54 | |
| 4 | Hsu Tung-hsiung | | 2:18.34 | |
| 5 | José Joaquín Santibáñez | | 2:19.47 | |
| 6 | Amin Ahmed Adel Youssef | | 2:24.61 | |
Heat 2
| Rank | Athlete | Country | Time | Notes |
| 1 | András Hargitay | | 2:10.88 | |
| 2 | Bruce Featherston | | 2:15.18 | |
| 3 | Clay Evans | | 2:15.19 | |
| 4 | David Brumwell | | 2:16.84 | |
| 5 | Gudmunður Gíslason | | 2:20.00 | |
| 6 | James Findlay | | 2:20.08 | |
| 7 | Ronnie Wong | | 2:34.82 | |
Heat 3
| Rank | Athlete | Country | Time | Notes |
| 1 | Gunnar Larsson | | 2:09.70 | |
| 2 | Klaus Steinbach | | 2:13.84 | |
| 3 | Doug Jamison | | 2:17.71 | |
| 4 | Antônio Azevedo | | 2:19.41 | |
| 5 | Marian Slavic | | 2:19.98 | |
| 6 | Roy Chan | | 2:24.43 | |
| 7 | Barry Prime | | 2:18.84 | DQ |
Heat 4
| Rank | Athlete | Country | Time | Notes |
| 1 | Tim McKee | | 2:10.44 | |
| 2 | Juan Carlos Bello | | 2:11.70 | |
| 3 | David Wilkie | | 2:13.25 | |
| 4 | John McConnochie | | 2:15.04 | |
| 5 | Andreas Weber | | 2:16.17 | |
| 6 | Neil Martin | | 2:16.24 | |
| 7 | François van Kruisdijk | | 2:17.14 | |
Heat 5
| Rank | Athlete | Country | Time | Notes |
| 1 | Steve Furniss | | 2:09.97 | |
| 2 | Hans Ljungberg | | 2:12.46 | |
| 3 | Valentyn Partyka | | 2:13.24 | |
| 4 | Ricardo Marmolejo | | 2:15.82 | |
| 5 | Zbigniew Pacelt | | 2:17.35 | |
| 6 | Bruno Bassoul | | 2:27.78 | |
| 7 | Chiang Jin Choon | | 2:32.67 | |
Heat 6
| Rank | Athlete | Country | Time | Notes |
| 1 | Gary Hall | | 2:09.85 | |
| 2 | Mikhail Sukharev | | 2:11.91 | |
| 3 | Christian Lietzmann | | 2:13.42 | |
| 4 | Jiro Sasaki | | 2:16.56 | |
| 5 | Jairulla Jaitulla | | 2:17.23 | |
| 6 | Lorenzo Marugo | | 2:19.00 | |
Final
| Rank | Athlete | Country | Time | Notes |
| Gunnar Larsson | | 2:07.17 | WR |
| Tim McKee | | 2:08.37 | |
| Steve Furniss | | 2:08.45 | |
| 4 | Gary Hall, Sr. | | 2:08.49 | |
| 5 | András Hargitay | | 2:09.66 | |
| 6 | Mikhail Sukharev | | 2:11.78 | |
| 7 | Juan Carlos Bello | | 2:11.87 | |
| 8 | Hans Ljungberg | | 2:13.56 | |
Key: WR = World record
