Swimming at the 1952 Summer Olympics – Men's 400 metre freestyle Swimming at the 1952 Summer Olympics – Men's 400 metre freestyle The men's 400 metre freestyle event at the 1952 Olympic Games took place between 28 and 30 July at the Swimming Stadium. 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. At the conclusion of the race, Boiteux's father jumped into the pool to
Swimming (sport) female athletes compete in 16 of the recognized events each. Olympic events are held in a 50-meter pool, called a long course pool. There are forty officially recognized individual swimming events in the pool; however the International Olympic Committee only recognizes 32 of them. The international governing body for competitive swimming is the "Fédération Internationale de Natation" ("International Swimming Federation"), better known as FINA. In open water swimming, where the events are swum in a body of open water (lake or sea), there are also 5 km, 10 km and 25 km events for men and women. However, only the