The men's 200 metre individual medley event at the 2024 Summer Olympics was held from 1 to 2 August 2024 at Paris La Défense Arena, which was converted to a swimming pool for the swimming events.[1] Since an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, each competitor had to swim four lengths of the pool—one length with each stroke.[a]
In the final, Shun led at 50 metres, but Marchand overtook him and held is lead to claim gold with a new Olympic and European record of 1:54.06. Scott defended his silver medal from the previous Olympics with 1:55.31, and Shun won bronze with 1:56.00. The win gave Marchand his fourth gold medal of the games, and Shun's third consecutive Olympic medal in the event.
Both SwimSwam and Swimming World predicted Marchand would win and Shun would take second. SwimSwam predicted Scott would come third, while Swimming World predicted Foster would take third.[2][5]
Each National Olympic Committee (NOC) was permitted to enter a maximum of two qualified athletes in each individual event, but only if both of them had attained the Olympic Qualifying Time (OQT).[6] For this event, the OQT was 1:57.94. World Aquatics then considered athletes qualifying through universality; NOCs were given one event entry for each gender, which could be used by any athlete regardless of qualification time, providing the spaces had not already been taken by athletes from that nation who had achieved the OQT.[6][3] Finally, the rest of the spaces were filled by athletes who had met the Olympic Consideration Time (OCT), which was 1:58.53 for this event.[6] In total, 16 athletes qualified through achieving the OQT, seven athletes qualified through universality places and two athletes qualified through achieving the OCT.[3]
Four heats took place on 1 August 2024, starting at 11:47.[c][7] The swimmers with the best 16 times in the heats advanced to the semifinals.[8]Japan's Daiya Seto qualified with the fastest time of 1:57.48, Scott qualified second with 1:57.77 and Marchand qualified third with 1:57.86. Shun, Dean, Casas, Foster and Knox also all qualified.[9] For the first Olympics since London 2012, swimming under 2 minutes was not required to qualify.[10]
Two semifinals took place on 1 August, starting at 21:47.[11] The swimmers with the best eight times in the semifinals advanced to the final.[8] Foster won the first semifinal with the second fastest time of 1:56.37, and Marchand won the second semifinal to qualify with the fastest time of 1:56.31. Scott, Shun, Seto, Dean, Knox and Italy's Alberto Razzetti made up the rest of the spots in the final. Casas led the second semifinal at 50 metres but finished fourth and did not qualify.[12]
Shun swam the fastest fly split of the field, turning at the 50 metre split ahead of Marchand in second.[18] At 100 metres Marchand had taken the lead, which he extended over the breaststroke leg (100–150 m) and maintained over the freestyle leg (150–200 m)[18][19] to win gold with a new Olympic and European record of 1:54.06.[20] During the breaststroke leg, Shun was also overtaken by Scott, who maintained the second position to win the silver medal with 1:55.31.[21] Shun won bronze with 1:56.00, ahead of Foster who finished fourth with 1:56.10.[18][22]
Marchand's time of 1:54.06 was the second fastest swim ever in this event, 0.06 seconds behind Ryan Lochte's world record set in 2011.[20] The win gave him his fourth gold medal of the games, after he had already won the 400 metre individual medley, the 200 metre butterfly and the 200 metre breaststroke events. He was the fourth swimmer in history to win four individual gold medals at a single Olympics, along with Michael Phelps, Mark Spitz and Kristin Otto.[23] Scott defended his silver from the previous Olympics and Shun's bronze was his third medal in the event at the Olympics.[24]
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