The men's 400 metre freestyle event at the 1960 Olympic Games took place between 30 and 31 August. 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.

Results

Heats

Six heats were held; the fastest eight swimmers advanced to the Finals. The swimmers that advanced are highlighted.

Heat One Rank Athlete Country Time 1 Tsuyoshi Yamanaka Japan 4:21.0 2 Hans-Joachim Klein Germany 4:31.6 3 Veljko Rogošić Yugoslavia 4:39.5 4 Tamás Hornyánszky Hungary 4:46.2 5 Helmut Ilk Austria 4:58.1 6 Karl Fridlin Switzerland 5:02.3

Heat Two Rank Athlete Country Time 1 John Konrads Australia 4:24.3 2 József Katona Hungary 4:29.5 3 Richard Campion Great Britain 4:32.3 4 Sven-Göran Johansson Sweden 4:35.6 5 Kari Haavisto Finland 4:36.0 6 Jean Pommat France 4:46.5 – Leonid Kolesnikov Soviet Union DNF

Heat Three Rank Athlete Country Time 1 Ian Black Great Britain 4:21.9 2 Makoto Fukui Japan 4:26.7 3 Jerzy Tracz Poland 4:38.6 4 Per-Olof Ericsson Sweden 4:41.2 5 Ilkka Suvanto Finland 4:42.1 6 Raúl Guzmán Mexico 4:42.2 7 Eduardo de Sousa Portugal 4:51.6

Heat Four Rank Athlete Country Time 1 Murray Rose Australia 4:22.5 2 Aubrey Bürer South Africa 4:31.9 3 Paolo Galletti Italy 4:36.6 4 Milan Jeger Yugoslavia 4:41.4 5 Zakaria Nasution Indonesia 4:54.0 6 Amiram Trauber Israel 4:58.6 7 Robert Chenaux Puerto Rico 5:24.6

Heat Five Rank Athlete Country Time 1 Murray McLachlan South Africa 4:25.9 2 Gene Lenz United States 4:29.2 3 Jean-Pascal Curtillet France 4:36.5 4 Rubén Roca Cuba 4:41.3 5 José Cossio Spain 4:50.1 6 Fong Seow Jit Malaya 5:07.3

Heat Six Rank Athlete Country Time 1 Alan Somers United States 4:19.2 2 Mauricio Ocampo Mexico 4:35.3 3 Gerhard Hetz Germany 4:38.4 4 Bana Sailani Philippines 4:40.2 5 Jan Lutomski Poland 4:42.8 6 Massimo Rosi Italy 4:45.1 7 Hans-Ulrich Dürst Switzerland 4:52.5

Final

Rank Athlete Country Time Notes Murray Rose 4:18.3 OR Tsuyoshi Yamanaka 4:21.4 John Konrads 4:21.8 4 Ian Black 4:21.8 5 Alan Somers 4:22.0 6 Murray McLachlan 4:26.3 7 Gene Lenz 4:26.8 8 Makoto Fukui 4:29.6

Key: OR = Olympic record

References