The women's 200 metre freestyle event at the 1972 Olympic Games took place September 1. 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 four lengths of the pool.
Results
Heats Heat 1 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Ann Marshall 2:08.12 OR, Q 2 Karin Tülling 2:09.01 Q 3 Jutta Weber 2:12.44 4 Merrily Stratten 2:12.44 5 Heather Coombridge 2:14.78 6 Karen LeGresley 2:16.34 7 Belinda Phillips 2:19.49
Heat 2 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Anke Rijnders 2:09.09 Q 2 Helen Gray 2:12.76 3 Nadezhda Matyukhina 2:13.60 4 Françoise Monod 2:15.30 5 Olga de Angulo 2:17.34 6 Silvia Borgini 2:23.11
Heat 3 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Keena Rothhammer 2:07.48 OR, Q 2 Hansje Bunschoten 2:08.58 Q 3 Tatyana Zolotnitskaya 2:13.12 4 Yelena Timoshenko 2:14.06 5 Diana Sutherland 2:16.00 6 Ileana Morales 2:18.84
Heat 4 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Shane Gould 2:07.95 Q 2 Deborah Palmer 2:10.29 3 Uta Schütz 2:12.84 4 Mary Beth Rondeau 2:13.52 5 Susan Edmondson 2:13.54 6 Lucy Burle 2:18.57 7 Marcia Arriaga 2:18.93
Heat 5 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Andrea Eife 2:07.95 OR, Q 2 Shirley Babashoff 2:08.48 Q 3 Gudrun Wegner 2:09.49 4 Angela Steinbach 2:10.59 5 Lesley Allardice 2:13.43 6 Roselina Angel 2:18.62 7 Hsu Yue-yun 2:20.17
Final
Rank Athlete Country Time Notes Shane Gould 2:03.56 WR Shirley Babashoff 2:04.33 Keena Rothhammer 2:04.92 4 Ann Marshall 2:05.45 5 Andrea Eife 2:06.27 6 Hansje Bunschoten 2:08.40 7 Anke Rijnders 2:09.41 8 Karin Tülling 2:11.70
Key: WR = World record
References