The men's 1500 metre freestyle event at the 2024 Summer Olympics was held from 3 to 4 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 30 lengths of the pool.
Both SwimSwam and Swimming World predicted Finke would take gold and Wiffen would take silver. Swimming World predicted Short would win bronze, while SwimSwam predicted Paltrinieri would take it.[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 15:00.99. 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][7] Finally, the rest of the spaces were filled by athletes who had met the Olympic Consideration Time (OCT), which was 15:05.49 for this event.[6] In total, 24 athletes qualified through achieving the OQT, two athletes qualified through universality places and two athletes qualified through achieving the OCT.[7]
Four heats took place on 4 August 2024, starting at 18:37.[b][8] The swimmers with the best eight times in the heats advanced to the final.[8] Wiffen qualified with the fastest time of 14:40.34, which was two seconds faster than the rest of the field, while Paltrinieri qualified with the second fastest time of 14:42.56.[9] Hungary's Dávid Betlehem broke his country's national record with a time of 14:45.59.[10]Tunisia's Ahmed Jaouadi, France's David Aubry, Turkey's Kuzey Tunçelli, France's Damien Joly, Dávid Betlehem of Hungary, and Finke also qualified.[9] Romanchuk withdrew from the race due to illness.[11]
The final took place at 18:37 on 4 August.[12] Finke led from beginning to end to successfully defend his title with a new world record of 14:30.67,[13] which beat Sun Yang's previous mark of 14:31.02 from the 2012 Olympics.[14][15] Paltrinieri finished almost four seconds later with 14:34.55 to win silver, and Wiffen finished with 14:39.63 for bronze.[13][16]
SwimSwam noted that Finke had changed his strategy away from swimming faster during the back end of the race to swimming a more consistent pace the whole way through,[19] and they later called his race the "swim of the meet".[20] Finke's win also moved the USA to the top of the swimming medal table,[21] where they stayed for the remaining day of the swimming events.[22] His win won him the USA's only male individual swimming gold of the Games.[23]
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