Swimming at the 1972 Summer Olympics – Men's 400 metre individual medley


The men's 400 metre individual medley event at the 1972 Summer Olympics took place August 30. This swimming event used medley swimming. Because an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, this race consisted of eight lengths of the pool. The first two lengths were swum using the butterfly stroke, the second pair with the backstroke, the third pair of lengths in breaststroke, and the final two were 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.

Final with controversial margin

The final was won by Gunnar Larsson, who succeeded over second-placed Tim McKee by two thousandths of a second. This margin in effect brought about a change in the competition, so that no swimming competition henceforward would have to be decided by a margin less than a hundredth of a second.

Medalists

Results

Heats

Heat 1
RankAthleteCountryTimeNotes
1András Hargitay4:37.51
2Christian Lietzmann4:44.47
3Roger van Hamburg4:50.70
4José Luis Prado4:54.49
5Barry Prime4:57.77
6Jairulla Jaitulla5:05.48

Heat 2
RankAthleteCountryTimeNotes
1Gunnar Larsson4:34.99
2John McConnochie4:49.89
3Valentyn Partyka4:50.03
4David Brumwell4:52.41
5Jiro Sasaki4:53.65
6Antônio Azevedo4:57.27
7Hsu Tung-hsiung5:09.56

Heat 3
RankAthleteCountryTimeNotes
1Steve Furniss4:39.33
2Ricardo Marmolejo4:45.20
3Bertram Türpe4:46.55
4Neil Martin4:49.85
5Csaba Sós4:52.89
6Sverre Kile4:59.72
7Gudmunður Gíslason5:03.54

Heat 4
RankAthleteCountryTimeNotes
1Tim McKee4:40.78
2Graham Windeatt4:42.16
3Mikhail Sukharev4:43.13
4Hans-Joachim Geisler4:48.57
5Mauro Calligaris4:52.02
6Mike Holthaus4:58.19

Heat 5
RankAthleteCountryTimeNotes
1Bengt Gingsjö4:38.05
2Gary Hall4:38.95
3Wolfram Sperling4:42.75
4Jorge Delgado Jr.4:45.25
5Bruce Featherston4:47.33
6Zbigniew Pacelt4:55.38

Final

RankAthleteCountryTimeNotes
Gunnar Larsson4:31.98OR
Tim McKee4:31.98OR
András Hargitay4:32.70
4Steve Furniss4:35.44
5Gary Hall, Sr.4:37.38
6Bengt Gingsjö4:37.96
7Graham Windeatt4:40.39
8Wolfram Sperling4:40.66

Key: OR = Olympic record