Swimming at the 1996 Summer Olympics – Women's 200 metre breaststroke

Women's 200 metre breaststroke; at the Games of the XXVI Olympiad
Venue	Georgia Tech Aquatic Center
Date	23 July (heats and finals)
Competitors	42 from 35 nations
Winning time	2:25.41 (OR)
Medalists
	← 1992 2000 →

Swimming events at the 1996 Summer Olympics
Freestyle
50 m	men	women
100 m	men	women
200 m	men	women
400 m	men	women
800 m		women
1500 m	men
Backstroke
100 m	men	women
200 m	men	women
Breaststroke
100 m	men	women
200 m	men	women
Butterfly
100 m	men	women
200 m	men	women
Individual medley
200 m	men	women
400 m	men	women
Freestyle relay
4×100 m	men	women
4×200 m	men	women
Medley relay
4×100 m	men	women

The women's 200 metre breaststroke event, included in the swimming competition at the 1996 Summer Olympics, took place on July 23, at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center in Atlanta, United States. In this event, swimmers covered four lengths of the 50-metre (160 ft) Olympic-sized pool employing the breaststroke.

Records

Prior to this competition, the existing world and Olympic records were:

World record	Rebecca Brown (AUS)	2:24.76 s	Brisbane, Australia	15 March 1994	^[1]^[2]
Olympic record	Kyoko Iwasaki (JPN)	2:26.65 s	Barcelona, Spain	27 July 1992	^[3]

The following records were established during the competition:

Date	Round	Name	Nationality	Time	OR	WR
23 July	Heat 4	Penelope Heyns	South Africa	2:26.63	OR
23 July	Final A	Penelope Heyns	South Africa	2:25.41	OR

Rank	Heat	Lane	Name	Nationality	Time	Notes
1	4	4	Penelope Heyns	South Africa	2:26.63	QA, OR^[4]
2	5	4	Amanda Beard	United States	2:28.10	QA
3	6	4	Samantha Riley	Australia	2:28.30	QA
4	6	3	Masami Tanaka	Japan	2:29.36	QA
5	5	3	Ágnes Kovács	Hungary	2:29.58	QA
6	6	5	Brigitte Becue	Belgium	2:29.62	QA
7	5	6	Nadine Neumann	Australia	2:29.91	QA
8	6	6	Christin Petelski	Canada	2:30.30	QA
9	5	7	Lin Li	China	2:30.64	QB
10	6	2	Alicja Pęczak	Poland	2:30.64	QB
11	4	3	Kyoko Iwasaki	Japan	2:30.84	QB
12	6	1	Marie Hardiman	Great Britain	2:31.12	QB
13	5	5	Jilen Siroky	United States	2:31.57	QB
14	4	7	Lena Eriksson	Sweden	2:31.65	QB
15	5	2	Lenka Maňhalová	Czech Republic	2:32.14	QB
16	4	2	Svitlana Bondarenko	Ukraine	2:32.42	QB
17	4	1	Julia Russell	South Africa	2:32.44
18	4	8	Elin Austevoll	Norway	2:32.48
19	4	6	Riley Mants	Canada	2:32.97
20	3	5	Alenka Kejžar	Slovenia	2:33.34
21	6	7	Maria Östling	Sweden	2:33.44
22	5	1	Yelena Makarova	Russia	2:33.74
23	3	6	Lourdes Becerra	Spain	2:33.80
24	3	4	Elvira Fischer	Austria	2:33.89
25	4	5	Yuan Yuan	China	2:33.89
26	5	8	Manuela Dalla Valle	Italy	2:34.76
27	3	1	Mia Hagman	Finland	2:36.11
28	3	7	Roh Joo-Hee	South Korea	2:36.20
29	2	4	Karine Brémond	France	2:36.26
30	2	6	Isabel Ceballos	Colombia	2:36.94
31	3	2	Kathrin Dumitru	Germany	2:37.07
32	3	8	María Carolina Santa Cruz	Argentina	2:37.85
33	6	8	Larisa Lăcustă	Romania	2:38.08
34	2	7	Margarita Kalmikova	Latvia	2:39.63
35	1	3	Erika Graf	Uruguay	2:42.97
36	2	3	Mou Ying-Hsin	Chinese Taipei	2:43.94
37	2	2	Nádia Cruz	Angola	2:44.24
38	2	1	Natália Kodajová	Slovakia	2:45.21
39	2	5	Cerian Gibbes	Trinidad and Tobago	2:45.87
40	1	5	Oksana Cherevko	Kyrgyzstan	2:57.65
41	1	4	Britta Vestergaard	Denmark	—	DNS^[4]
42	3	3	Anna Wilson	New Zealand	—	DNS^[4]

Rank	Lane	Name	Nationality	Time
1	7	Lena Eriksson	Sweden	2:28.87
2	3	Kyoko Iwasaki	Japan	2:29.32
3	1	Lenka Maňhalová	Czech Republic	2:29.96
4	8	Julia Russell	South Africa	2:30.38
5	5	Alicja Pęczak	Poland	2:30.99
6	6	Marie Hardiman	Great Britain	2:31.39
7	2	Jilen Siroky	United States	2:33.43
8	4	Lin Li	China	2:33.45

Rank	Lane	Name	Nationality	Time	Notes
	4	Penelope Heyns	South Africa	2:25.41	OR^[5]
	5	Amanda Beard	United States	2:25.75
	2	Ágnes Kovács	Hungary	2:26.57
4	3	Samantha Riley	Australia	2:27.91
5	6	Masami Tanaka	Japan	2:28.05
6	1	Nadine Neumann	Australia	2:28.34
7	7	Brigitte Becue	Belgium	2:28.36
8	8	Christin Petelski	Canada	2:31.45