The men's 400 metre freestyle event at the 1952 Olympic Games took place between 28 and 30 July 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 consisted of eight lengths of the pool.

At the conclusion of the race, Boiteux's father jumped into the pool to congratulate his son.

Results

Heats Heat 1 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 Jack Wardrop 4:43.7 2 Yasuo Tanaka 4:44.3 3 Gotfryd Gremlowski 4:49.0 4 Jo Bernardo 4:53.5 5 Pentti Ikonen 4:55.7 6 Geoffrey Marks 5:15.2 7 Georg Mascetti 5:31.2

Heat 2 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 Hironoshin Furuhashi 4:43.3 2 Viktor Drobinsky 4:56.5 3 Neo Chwee Kok 4:57.5 4 Eduardo Priggione 5:12.1 5 Walter Bardgett 5:18.0 6 Sonny Monteiro 5:21.6

Heat 3 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 Jimmy McLane 4:46.5 2 Dennis Ford 4:50.2 3 Allen Gilchrist 4:52.5 4 Enrique Granados 4:53.7 5 Federico Zwanck 4:56.4 6 Ricardo Esperard 5:09.5 7 Walter Schneider 5:27.3

Heat 4 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 Jean Boiteux 4:45.1 2 Graham Johnston 4:52.3 3 Anatoly Raznochintsev 4:56.8 4 Peter Steinwender 5:03.6 5 Peter Head 5:04.2 6 Cheung Kin Man 5:11.4

Heat 5 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 György Csordás 4:45.7 2 Ford Konno 4:47.9 3 Joris Tjebbes 4:54.4 4 Carlos Alberto Bonacich 5:06.3 5 Per Olsen 5:08.6 6 Pentti Paatsalo 5:09.3 7 Robert Cook 5:15.4

Heat 6 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 Per-Olof Östrand 4:38.6 2 Gusztáv Kettesi 4:53.0 3 Garrick Agnew 4:55.5 4 Roar Woldum 5:14.4 5 Einari Aalto 5:15.8

Heat 7 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 Tetsuo Okamoto 4:46.1 2 John Marshall 4:46.8 3 Gerry McNamee 4:53.5 4 Alfredo Yantorno 4:54.5 5 Ronald Burns 4:55.2 6 Nguyễn Văn Phan 5:36.5

Heat 8 Rank Athlete Country Time Note 1 Wayne Moore 4:43.2 2 Peter Duncan 4:44.0 3 Yoshio Tanaka 4:54.0 4 Angelo Romani 5:05.1 5 René Million 5:07.0 6 Fernando Madeira 5:08.6 7 Muhammad Ramzan 5:45.7

Final

Rank Athlete Country Time Notes Jean Boiteux 4:30.7 OR Ford Konno 4:31.3 Per-Olof Östrand 4:35.2 4 Peter Duncan 4:37.9 5 Jack Wardrop 4:39.9 6 Wayne Moore 4:40.1 7 Jimmy McLane 4:40.3 8 Hironoshin Furuhashi 4:42.1

Key: OR = Olympic record

References