Swimming at the 1968 Summer Olympics – Women's 400 metre individual medley

The women's 400 metre individual medley event at the 1968 Summer Olympics took place on 24–25 October.[1] 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

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Gold Claudia Kolb
  United States
Silver Lynn Vidali
  United States
Bronze Sabine Steinbach
  East Germany

Results

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Heats

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Heat 1

Rank Athlete Country Time Note
1 Sue Pedersen   United States 5:26.4
2 Larisa Zakharova   Soviet Union 5:38.6
3 Hennie Penterman   Netherlands 5:38.8
4 Carla Galle   Belgium 5:55.2
5 Olga de Angulo   Colombia 6:00.6

Heat 2

Rank Athlete Country Time Note
1 Sabine Steinbach   East Germany 5:31.3
2 Eva Sigg   Finland 5:37.3
3 Sue Eddy   Australia 5:42.2
4 Norma Amezcua   Mexico 5:47.9
5 Ruth Apt   Uruguay 6:04.5
6 Shen Bao-ni   Taiwan 6:21.5

Heat 3

Rank Athlete Country Time Note
1 Lynn Vidali   United States 5:28.9
2 Shelagh Ratcliffe   Great Britain 5:33.2
3 Laura Vaca   Mexico 5:33.7
4 Tamara Oynick   Mexico 5:48.4
5 Kirsten Strange-Campbell   Denmark 5:59.0

Heat 4

Rank Athlete Country Time Note
1 Marianne Seydel   East Germany 5:30.9
2 Tui Shipston   New Zealand 5:33.7
3 Eva Wittke   East Germany 5:40.6
4 Mariya Nikolova   Bulgaria 5:45.2
5 Patricia Olano   Colombia 5:52.6
6 Yvonne Tobis   Israel 5:53.8
7 Hedy García   Philippines 6:07.3

Heat 5

Rank Athlete Country Time Note
1 Claudia Kolb   United States 5:17.2
2 Dianna Rickard   Australia 5:37.8
3 Heli Matzdorf   West Germany 5:50.5
4 Consuelo Changanaqui   Peru 5:52.2
5 Nelly Syro   Colombia 6:13.1

Final

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Rank Athlete Country Time Notes
  Claudia Kolb   United States 5:08.5 OR
  Lynn Vidali   United States 5:22.2
  Sabine Steinbach   East Germany 5:25.3
4 Sue Pedersen   United States 5:25.8
5 Shelagh Ratcliffe   Great Britain 5:30.5
6 Marianne Seydel   East Germany 5:32.0
7 Tui Shipston   New Zealand 5:34.6
8 Laura Vaca   Mexico 5:35.7

Key: OR = Olympic record

References

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  1. ^ "Swimming at the 1968 Mexico City Summer Games: Women's 400 metres Individual Medley". Sports Reference. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020. Retrieved 19 November 2016.