Swimming at the 1972 Summer Olympics – Women's 200 metre individual medley
Rank Athlete Country Time
1 Shane Gould Australia 2:23.07
2 Kornelia Ender East Germany 2:23.59
3 Lynn Vidali United States 2:24.06
4 Jenny Bartz United States 2:24.55
5 Leslie Cliff Canada 2:24.83
6 Evelyn Stolze East Germany 2:25.90
7 Yoshimi Nishigawa Japan 2:26.35
8 Carolyn Woods United States 2:27.42
Results -- Final
The women's 200 metre individual medley event at the 1972 Olympic Games took place August 28. This swimming event used medley swimming. Because an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, this race consisted of four lengths of the pool. The first length was swum using the butterfly stroke, the second with the backstroke, the third length in breaststroke, and the fourth 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 anyway.