The men's 1500 metre freestyle event at the 1952 Olympic Games took place between 31 July and 2 August, at the Swimming Stadium. 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 consists of 30 lengths of the pool.

Even though the top three swimmers were from different countries, all of them were of Japanese origin. Ford Konno was Japanese American and Tetsuo Okamoto was Japanese Brazilian.

Results

Heats Swimmers was starting in six heats. Eight of them with best times qualified to final round. Shiro Hashizume in first heat established new olympic record.

Heat 1 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes1 Shiro Hashizume 18:34.0 Q OR2 Gotfryd Gremlowski 19:17.5 3 Tonatiuh Gutiérrez 19:18.9 4 Sylvio dos Santos 19:26.8 5 Graham Johnston 19:27.1 6 Gerry McNamee 20:02.5 7 Sambiao Basanung 20:58.6

Heat 2 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes1 Jimmy McLane 19:09.3 Q2 Heinz-Günther Lehmann 19:17.9 3 Efrén Fierro 19:55.8 4 Garrick Agnew 20:03.8 5 Walter Schneider 21:36.2 6 Muhammad Ramzan 23:44.3

Heat 3 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Tetsuo Okamoto 19:05.6 Q 2 György Csordás 19:26.2 3 Yukiyoshi Aoki 19:27.0 4 Endel Press 20:11.7 5 Walter Bardgett 21:42.4 6 Sonny Monteiro 22:26.7

Heat 4 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Jean Boiteux 19:12.3 2 Bill Woolsey 19:24.6 3 César Borja 19:43.3 4 Bob Sreenan 19:59.2 5 Vladimir Lavrienko 20:07.8 6 Cheung Kin Man 20:50.2 7 Eduardo Priggione 21:11.9

Heat 5 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Ford Konno 18:53.7 Q 2 Jo Bernardo 19:06.5 Q 3 Dennis Ford 19:27.6 4 Allen Gilchrist 20:08.3

Heat 6 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Peter Duncan 19:03.5 Q 2 John Marshall 19:09.2 Q 3 Yasuo Kitamura 19:10.3 Q 4 Enrique Granados 19:45.9 5 Geoffrey Marks 20:59.4 6 Robert Cook 20:59.6 7 Roar Woldum 21:19.5

Final

Rank Athlete Country Time Notes Ford Konno 18:30.3 OR Shiro Hashizume 18:41.4 Tetsuo Okamoto 18:51.3 4 Jimmy McLane 18:51.5 5 Jo Bernardo 18:59.1 6 Yasuo Kitamura 19:00.4 7 Peter Duncan 19:12.1 8 John Marshall 19:53.4

Key: OR = Olympic record

References