Swimming at the 1972 Summer Olympics – Men's 400 metre individual medley
Introduction 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''' Rank  Athlete Country  Time  Notes 1  András Hargitay    4:37.51   2  Christian Lietzmann    4:44.47   3  Roger van Hamburg    4:50.70   4  José Luis Prado    4:54.49   5  Barry Prime    4:57.77   6  Jairulla Jaitulla    5:05.48  '''Heat 2''' Rank  Athlete Country  Time  Notes 1  Gunnar Larsson    4:34.99   2  John McConnochie    4:49.89   3  Valentyn Partyka    4:50.03   4  David Brumwell    4:52.41   5  Jiro Sasaki    4:53.65   6  Antônio Azevedo    4:57.27   7  Hsu Tung-hsiung    5:09.56  '''Heat 3''' Rank  Athlete Country  Time  Notes 1  Steve Furniss    4:39.33   2  Ricardo Marmolejo    4:45.20   3  Bertram Türpe    4:46.55   4  Neil Martin    4:49.85   5  Csaba Sós    4:52.89   6  Sverre Kile    4:59.72   7  Guðmundur Gíslason    5:03.54  '''Heat 4''' Rank  Athlete Country  Time  Notes 1  Tim McKee    4:40.78   2  Graham Windeatt    4:42.16   3  Mikhail Sukharev    4:43.13   4  Hans-Joachim Geisler    4:48.57   5  Mauro Calligaris    4:52.02   6  Mike Holthaus    4:58.19  '''Heat 5''' Rank  Athlete Country  Time  Notes 1  Bengt Gingsjö    4:38.05   2  Gary Hall    4:38.95   3  Wolfram Sperling    4:42.75   4  Jorge Delgado Jr.    4:45.25   5  Bruce Featherston    4:47.33  6  Zbigniew Pacelt    4:55.38  ===Final=== Rank  Athlete Country  Time  Notes  1  Gunnar Larsson   4:31.98(1)  '''OR'''  2 Tim McKee   4:31.98(3)  '''OR'''  3  András Hargitay   4:32.70  ''' ''' 4  Steve Furniss   4:35.44  ''' ''' 5   Gary Hall, Sr.   4:37.38  ''' ''' 6   Bengt Gingsjö   4:37.96  ''' ''' 7  Graham Windeatt   4:40.39  ''' ''' 8  Wolfram Sperling   4:40.66  ''' ''''''Key''': OR = Olympic record
References