The men's 4×100 metre medley relay event at the 1968 Olympic Games took place on October 26.[1] This swimming event uses medley swimming as a relay. Because an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, each of the four swimmers completed two lengths of the pool, each using a different stroke. The first on each team used the backstroke, the second used the breaststroke, the third used the butterfly stroke, and the final swimmer used freestyle (restricted to not allow any of the first three strokes to be used, though nearly all swimmers use front crawl regardless).
The first swimmer must touch the wall before the next can leave the starting block, and so forth; timing of the starts is thus important.
Charlie Hickcox Don McKenzie Doug Russell Ken Walsh | Roland Matthes Egon Henninger Horst-Günter Gregor Frank Wiegand | Yuri Gromak Vladimir Nemshilov Vladimir Kosinsky Leonid Ilyichov |
Heat 1
| Place | width=620 | Swimmers | width=90 | Time | width=90 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4:04.3 | |||||
| 2 | 4:04.8 | |||||
| 3 | 4:06.0 | |||||
| 4 | 4:08.4 | |||||
| 5 | 4:08.8 | |||||
| 6 | 4:11.1 |
Heat 2
| Place | width=620 | Swimmers | width=90 | Time | width=90 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4:03.4 | |||||
| 2 | 4:04.1 | |||||
| 3 | 4:04.7 | |||||
| 4 | 4:12.2 | |||||
| 5 | 4:15.7 | |||||
| 6 | 4:20.6 | |||||
| 7 | 4:27.6 |
Heat 3
| Place | width=620 | Swimmers | width=90 | Time | width=90 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4:04.8 | |||||
| 2 | 4:06.8 | |||||
| 3 | 4:07.7 | |||||
| 4 | 4:10.0 | |||||
| 5 | 4:10.3 |
| Place | width=620 | Swimmers | width=90 | Time | width=90 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3:54.9 | |||||
| 2 | 3:57.5 | |||||
| 3 | 4:00.7 | |||||
| 4 | 4:00.8 | |||||
| 5 | 4:01.8 | NR | ||||
| 6 | 4:05.4 | |||||
| 7 | 4:07.3 | |||||
| 8 | 4:07.3 |