Swimming at the 1972 Summer Olympics – Women's 200 metre freestyle

Swimming events at the 1972 Summer Olympics
Freestyle
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
Medley relay
4×100 m	men	women

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.

Medalists

Gold	Shane Gould Australia
Silver	Shirley Babashoff United States
Bronze	Keena Rothhammer United States

Results

Heats

Heat 1

Rank	Athlete	Country	Time	Notes
1	Ann Marshall	United States	2:08.12	OR, Q
2	Karin Tülling	East Germany	2:09.01	Q
3	Jutta Weber	West Germany	2:12.44
4	Merrily Stratten	Canada	2:12.44
5	Heather Coombridge	New Zealand	2:14.78
6	Karen LeGresley	Canada	2:16.34
7	Belinda Phillips	Jamaica	2:19.49

Heat 2

Rank	Athlete	Country	Time	Notes
1	Anke Rijnders	Netherlands	2:09.09	Q
2	Helen Gray	Australia	2:12.76
3	Nadezhda Matyukhina	Soviet Union	2:13.60
4	Françoise Monod	Switzerland	2:15.30
5	Olga de Angulo	Colombia	2:17.34
6	Silvia Borgini	Argentina	2:23.11

Heat 3

Rank	Athlete	Country	Time	Notes
1	Keena Rothhammer	United States	2:07.48	OR, Q
2	Hansje Bunschoten	Netherlands	2:08.58	Q
3	Tatyana Zolotnitskaya	Soviet Union	2:13.12
4	Yelena Timoshenko	Soviet Union	2:14.06
5	Diana Sutherland	Great Britain	2:16.00
6	Ileana Morales	23x15px Venezuela	2:18.84

Heat 4

Rank	Athlete	Country	Time	Notes
1	Shane Gould	Australia	2:07.95	Q
2	Deborah Palmer	Australia	2:10.29
3	Uta Schütz	West Germany	2:12.84
4	Mary Beth Rondeau	Canada	2:13.52
5	Susan Edmondson	Great Britain	2:13.54
6	Lucy Burle	Brazil	2:18.57
7	Marcia Arriaga	Mexico	2:18.93

Heat 5

Rank	Athlete	Country	Time	Notes
1	Andrea Eife	East Germany	2:07.95	OR, Q
2	Shirley Babashoff	United States	2:08.48	Q
3	Gudrun Wegner	East Germany	2:09.49
4	Angela Steinbach	West Germany	2:10.59
5	Lesley Allardice	Great Britain	2:13.43
6	Roselina Angee	Colombia	2:18.62
7	Hsu Yue-Yun	Chinese Taipei	2:20.17

Final

Rank	Athlete	Country	Time	Notes
	Shane Gould	Australia	2:03.56	WR
	Shirley Babashoff	United States	2:04.33
	Keena Rothhammer	United States	2:04.92
4	Ann Marshall	United States	2:05.45
5	Andrea Eife	East Germany	2:06.27
6	Hansje Bunschoten	Netherlands	2:08.40
7	Anke Rijnders	Netherlands	2:09.41
8	Karin Tülling	East Germany	2:11.70