The men's 200 metre individual medley event at the 1968 Olympic Games took place between 19 and 20 October. 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.

Silver medalist Greg Buckingham's younger brother, Lindsey, went on to fame as a member of the rock group Fleetwood Mac.

Results

Heats Heat 1 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 Charlie Hickcox 2:16.1 2 Péter Lázár 2:17.1 3 Lars Kraus Jensen 2:21.2 4 Zbigniew Pacelt 2:23.3 5 Guðmundur Gíslason 2:24.1 6 Andrey Dunayev 2:25.9 7 Francisco Ramis 2:31.9 8 Rubén Guerrero 2:37.5

Heat 2 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 George Smith 2:16.4 2 Mike Holthaus 2:17.5 3 Frank Wiegand 2:18.0 4 Ronnie Wong 2:36.1 5 Donnacha O'Dea 2:36.6

Heat 3 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 John Ferris 2:14.6 2 Reinhard Merkel 2:17.8 3 Hans Ljungberg 2:17.8 4 Yulyan Rusev 2:22.7 5 Raymond Terrell 2:23.5 6 Olle Ferm 2:27.5 7 Lee Tong-shing DQ

Heat 4 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 Vladimir Kravchenko 2:18.6 2 István Szentirmay 2:21.0 3 Angel Chakarov 2:24.0 4 José Joaquín Santibáñez 2:24.6 5 Karl Byrom 2:28.0 6 Chan King-ming 2:44.9

Heat 5 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 Sandy Gilchrist 2:16.8 2 Juan Carlos Bello 2:17.5 3 Juan Fortuny 2:20.6 4 François Simons 2:22.5 5 Rafael Hernández 2:24.7 6 Salvador Vilanova 2:33.8 7 Bob Loh 2:39.3

Heat 6 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 Greg Buckingham 2:15.6 2 Michele D'Oppido 2:18.5 3 Ken Campbell 2:20.9 4 Eduardo Alanís 2:23.0 5 Gershon Shefa 2:26.6 6 Peter Schmid 2:36.4 7 Friedrich Jokisch 2:41.6

Heat 7 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 Jürgen Schiller 2:20.8 2 Martyn Woodroffe 2:22.0 3 Jacek Krawczyk 2:23.8 4 Tony Asamali 2:24.6 5 José Martínez 2:31.4 6 Andrew Loh 2:42.0

Final

Rank Athlete Country Time Notes Charlie Hickcox 2:12.0 OR Greg Buckingham 2:13.0 John Ferris 2:13.3 4 Juan Carlos Bello 2:13.7 5 George Smith 2:15.9 6 Sandy Gilchrist 2:16.6 7 Mike Holthaus 2:16.8 8 Péter Lázár 2:18.3

Key: OR = Olympic record

References