Swimming at the 1956 Summer Olympics – Women's 400 metre freestyle

The women's 400 metre freestyle event at the 1956 Olympic Games took place between 5 and 7 December.[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 eight lengths of the pool.

Medalists

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Gold Lorraine Crapp
  Australia
Silver Dawn Fraser
  Australia
Bronze Sylvia Ruuska
  United States

Results

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Heats

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Heat 1
Rank Athlete Country Time Notes
1 Valéria Gyenge   Hungary 5:14.2
2 Héda Frost   France 5:14.4
3 Karin Larsson   Sweden 5:18.3
4 Beth Whittall   Canada 5:21.7
5 Winifred Griffin   New Zealand 5:31.0
6 Gertrudes Lozada   Philippines 5:34.2
Heat 2
Rank Athlete Country Time Notes
1 Marley Shriver   United States 5:07.6
2 Sandra Morgan   Australia 5:07.8
3 Ingrid Künzel   Germany 5:20.8
4 Gladys Priestley   Canada 5:27.5
5 Anita Hellström   Sweden 5:29.2
6 Viviane Gouverneur   France 5:29.7
Heat 3
Rank Athlete Country Time Notes
1 Dawn Fraser   Australia 5:02.5
2 Sylvia Ruuska   United States 5:10.3
3 Ripszima Székely   Hungary 5:10.5
4 Susan Roberts   South Africa 5:16.8
5 Colette Thomas   France 5:23.9
6 Birgitta Wängberg   Sweden 5:27.0
7 Eiko Wada   Japan 5:27.2
Heat 4
Rank Athlete Country Time Notes
1 Lorraine Crapp   Australia 5:00.2
2 Susan Gray   United States 5:16.7
3 Natalie Myburgh   South Africa 5:16.8
4 Marrion Roe   New Zealand 5:18.5
5 Margaret Girvan   Great Britain 5:23.6
6 Gilda Aranda   Mexico 5:24.2
7 Yukiko Otaka   Japan 5:28.7

Final

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Rank Athlete Country Time Notes
  Lorraine Crapp   Australia 4:54.6 OR
  Dawn Fraser   Australia 5:02.5
  Sylvia Ruuska   United States 5:07.1
4 Marley Shriver   United States 5:12.9
5 Ripszima Székely   Hungary 5:14.2
6 Sandra Morgan   Australia 5:14.3
7 Héda Frost   France 5:15.4
8 Valéria Gyenge   Hungary 5:21.0

Key: OR = Olympic record

References

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  1. ^ "Swimming at the 1956 Melbourne Summer Games: Women's 400 metres Freestyle". Sports Reference. Archived from the original on 21 April 2020. Retrieved 6 October 2016.