The men's 100 metre backstroke event at the 1972 Olympic Games took place between August 28 and 29. This swimming event used backstroke. Because an Olympic-size swimming pool is 50 metres long, this race consisted of two lengths of the pool.

Results

Heats Heat 1 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Igor Grivennikov 1:00.05 2 Zoltán Verrasztó 1:01.13 3 Clay Evans 1:01.69 4 Rômulo Arantes Filho 1:03.18 5 Hsu Tung-hsiung 1:03.31 6 Sergio Hasbún 1:06.53 7 Sarun Van 1:07.26

Heat 2 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Bob Schoutsen 1:00.76 2 Lars Børgesen 1:01.23 3 László Cseh Sr. 1:01.63 4 José Joaquín Santibáñez 1:02.46 5 Predrag Miloš 1:03.02 6 Gustavo González 1:04.16 7 Gerardo Rosario 1:06.85

Heat 3 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 John Murphy 59.93 2 Ejvind Pedersen 1:00.83 3 Tadashi Honda 1:00.89 4 Ian MacKenzie 1:01.11 5 Helmut Podolan 1:01.49 6 Piotr Dłucik 1:01.94 7 Andreas Weber 1:02.49

Heat 4 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Mike Stamm 58.63 2 Lutz Wanja 1:00.62 3 Pierre Baehr 1:01.13 4 Colin Cunningham 1:01.28 5 Anders Sandberg 1:01.41 6 Neil Martin 1:05.13

Heat 5 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Mitch Ivey 58.15 2 Erik Fish 1:00.81 3 Nenad Miloš 1:00.94 4 Clive Rushton 1:01.07 5 Mark Crocker 1:11.20

Heat 6 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Roland Matthes 1:00.01 2 Jürgen Krüger 1:00.65 3 Jean-Paul Berjeau 1:00.83 4 Mike Richards 1:01.03 5 Róbert Rudolf 1:02.34 6 Amin Ahmed Adel Youssef 1:04.40 7 Chiang Jin Choon 1:07.65

Semifinals Semifinal 1 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Roland Matthes 58.74 2 Michael Stamm 58.74 3 Lutz Wanja 59.83 4 Tadashi Honda 1:00.43 5 Bob Schoutsen 1:00.48 6 Jean-Paul Berjeau 1:00.59 7 Ian MacKenzie 1:00.92 8 Michael Richards 1:01.27

Semifinal 2 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Mitch Ivey 57.99 2 John Murphy 58.64 3 Igor Grivennikov 59.15 4 Jürgen Krüger 1:00.06 5 Ejvind Pedersen 1:00.53 6 Eric Fish 1:00.73 7 Clive Rushton 1:01.25 8 Nenad Milos 1:01.29

Final

Rank Athlete Country Time Notes Roland Matthes 56.58 OR Mike Stamm 57.70 John Murphy 58.35 4 Mitch Ivey 58.48 5 Igor Grivennikov 59.50 6 Lutz Wanja 59.80 7 Jürgen Krüger 59.80 8 Tadashi Honda 1:00.41

Key: OR = Olympic record

References