Swimming at the 1972 Summer Olympics – Men's 200 metre freestyle

Swimming at the
1972 Summer Olympics
Freestyle
100 m men women
200 m men women
400 m men women
800 m women
1500 m men
Backstroke
100 m men women
200 m men women
Breaststroke
100 m men women
200 m men women
Butterfly
100 m men women
200 m men women
Individual medley
200 m men women
400 m men women
Freestyle relay
4×100 m men women
4×200 m men
Medley relay
4×100 m men women

The men's 200 metre freestyle event at the 1972 Olympic Games took place August 29. This swimming event used freestyle swimming, which means that the method of the stroke is not regulated (unlike backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly events). Nearly all swimmers use the front crawl or a variant of that stroke. Because an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, this race consisted of four lengths of the pool.

Contents

Medalists

Gold  Mark Spitz
United States (USA)
Silver  Steve Genter
United States (USA)
Bronze  Werner Lampe
West Germany (FRG)

Results

Heats

Final

Rank Athlete Country Time Notes
Mark Spitz United States 1:52.78 WR
Steve Genter United States 1:53.73
Werner Lampe West Germany 1:53.99
4 Mike Wenden Australia 1:54.40
5 Fred Tyler United States 1:54.96
6 Klaus Steinbach West Germany 1:55.65
7 Vladimir Bure Soviet Union 1:57.24
8 Ralph Hutton Canada 1:57.56

Key: WR = World record

References