Swimming at the 1972 Summer Olympics – Men's 1500 metre freestyle

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 1500 metre freestyle event at the 1972 Olympic Games took place between September 3 and 4. 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 30 lengths of the pool.

Medalists

Gold	Mike Burton United States (USA)
Silver	Graham Windeatt Australia (AUS)
Bronze	Doug Northway United States (USA)

Results

Final

Rank	Athlete	Country	Time	Notes
	Mike Burton	United States	15:52.58	WR
	Graham Windeatt	Australia	15:58.48
	Doug Northway	United States	16:09.25
4	Bengt Gingsjö	Sweden	16:16.01
5	Graham White	Australia	16:17.22
6	Mark Treffers	New Zealand	16:18.84
7	Brad Cooper	Australia	16:30.49
8	Guillermo García	Mexico	16:36.03

Key: WR = World record

References

• 1972 Summer Olympics results: Men's 1500 m freestyle, from http://www.sports-reference.com/; retrieved 2009-12-06.