Swimming at the 1972 Summer Olympics – Men's 4 × 100 metre medley relay

Swimming events 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 4×100 metre medley relay event at the 1972 Olympic Games took place on September 4. This swimming event uses medley swimming as a relay. Because an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, each of the four swimmers completed two lengths of the pool, each using a different stroke. The first on each team used the backstroke, the second used the breaststroke, the third used the butterfly stroke, and the final swimmer used freestyle (restricted to not allow any of the first three strokes to be used, though nearly all swimmers use front crawl regardless).

The first swimmer must touch the wall before the next can leave the starting block, and so forth; timing of the starts is thus important.

Medalists

Gold	Silver	Bronze
United States Mike Stamm Tom Bruce Mark Spitz Jerry Heidenreich	East Germany Roland Matthes Klaus Katzur Hartmut Flöckner Lutz Unger	Canada Erik Fish William Mahony Bruce Robertson Robert Kasting

Results

Heats

Heat 1

Heat 2

Heat 3

References

• 1972 Summer Olympics results: Men's 4 x 100 metre medley relay, from http://www.sports-reference.com/; retrieved 2009-12-09.