The women's 200 metre individual medley event at the 1972 Olympic Games took place August 28. 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.

Results

Heats Heat 1 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Nina Petrova 2:27.20 2 Anita Zarnowiecki 2:29.08 3 Gail Neall 2:29.64 4 Karen James 2:31.25 5 Debra Cain 2:31.82 6 Eleni Avlonitou 2:39.10 7 Patricia López 2:42.08

Heat 2 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Evelyn Stolze 2:25.45 2 Leslie Cliff 2:25.59 3 Jaroslava Slavíčková 2:27.33 4 Hennie Penterman 2:28.99 5 Éva Kiss 2:32.68 6 Hsu Yue-yun 2:35.93 7 María Ballesteros 2:37.00

Heat 3 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Jenny Bartz 2:25.83 2 Brigitte Schuchardt 2:30.04 3 Martha Nelson 2:30.51 4 Shelagh Ratcliffe 2:31.04 5 Gerda Lassooij 2:32.92 6 Eva Sigg 2:33.61 7 Gisela Cerezo 2:35.34 8 Laura Vaca 2:34.35 DQ

Heat 4 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Kornelia Ender 2:25.39 2 Carolyn Woods 2:26.98 3 Susan Hunter 2:30.29 4 Wijda Mazereeuw 2:32.59 5 Avis Willington 2:32.64 6 Maria Isabel Guerra 2:32.95 7 Kirsten Strange-Campbell 2:33.15

Heat 5 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Lynn Vidali 2:24.92 2 Yoshimi Nishigawa 2:26.61 3 Birutė Užkuraitytė 2:31.11 4 Susan Richardson 2:31.24 5 Judit Turóczy 2:32.63 6 Trine Krogh 2:36.27 7 Felicia Ospitaletche 2:37.69

Heat 6 Rank Athlete Country Time Notes 1 Shane Gould 2:26.44 2 Ágnes Kaczander-Kiss 2:28.05 3 Yukari Takemoto 2:29.41 4 Susanne Niesner 2:30.87 5 Karin Bormann 2:31.19 6 Helmi Boxberger 2:33.71 7 Roselina Angee 2:45.46 8 Ong Mei Lin 2:48.13

Final Rank Athlete Country Time Notes Shane Gould 2:23.07 WR Kornelia Ender 2:23.59 Lynn Vidali 2:24.06 4 Jenny Bartz 2:24.55 5 Leslie Cliff 2:24.83 6 Evelyn Stolze 2:25.90 7 Yoshimi Nishigawa 2:26.35 8 Carolyn Woods 2:27.42

Key: WR = World record

References