Swimming at the 1968 Summer Olympics – Women's 400 metre individual medley
Introduction The '''women's 400 metre individual medley''' event at the 1968 Summer Olympics took place on 24–25 October. 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.
Medalists
Results ===Heats==='''Heat 1''' Rank  Athlete  Country  Time  Note 1  Sue Pedersen    5:26.4   2  Larisa Zakharova    5:38.6   3  Hennie Penterman    5:38.8   4  Carla Galle    5:55.2   5  Olga de Angulo    6:00.6  '''Heat 2''' Rank  Athlete  Country  Time  Note 1  Sabine Steinbach    5:31.3   2  Eva Sigg    5:37.3   3  Sue Eddy    5:42.2   4  Norma Amezcua    5:47.9   5  Ruth Apt    6:04.5   6  Shen Bao-ni    6:21.5  '''Heat 3''' Rank  Athlete  Country  Time  Note 1  Lynn Vidali    5:28.9   2  Shelagh Ratcliffe    5:33.2   3  Laura Vaca    5:33.7   4  Tamara Oynick    5:48.4   5  Kirsten Strange-Campbell    5:59.0  '''Heat 4''' Rank  Athlete  Country  Time  Note 1  Marianne Seydel    5:30.9   2  Tui Shipston    5:33.7   3  Eva Wittke    5:40.6   4  Mariya Nikolova    5:45.2   5  Patricia Olano    5:52.6   6  Yvonne Tobis    5:53.8   7  Hedy García    6:07.3  '''Heat 5''' Rank  Athlete  Country  Time  Note 1  Claudia Kolb    5:17.2   2  Dianna Rickard    5:37.8   3  Heli Matzdorf    5:50.5   4  Consuelo Changanaqui    5:52.2   5  Nelly Syro    6:13.1  ===Final=== Rank  Athlete Country  Time  Notes  1  Claudia Kolb   5:08.5  '''OR'''  2 Lynn Vidali   5:22.2  '''  '''  3  Sabine Steinbach   5:25.3  ''' ''' 4  Sue Pedersen   5:25.8  ''' ''' 5   Shelagh Ratcliffe   5:30.5  ''' ''' 6   Marianne Seydel   5:32.0  ''' ''' 7  Tui Shipston   5:34.6  ''' ''' 8  Laura Vaca   5:35.7  ''' ''''''Key''': OR = Olympic record
References