The men's 400 metre individual medley event at the 2024 Summer Olympics was held on 28 July 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 eight lengths of the pool.
The world record holder Léon Marchand of France was the heavy favourite going into the event. He qualified for the finals with the fastest seed, while the USA's defending Olympic champion Chase Kalisz and Australia's defending Olympic bronze medallist Brendon Smith both failed to qualify for the finals. Also in the heats, Germany's Cedric Büssing swam a time of 4:11.52 to break his country's national record.
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).[4] For this event, the OQT was 4:12.50. World Aquatics then filled the rest of the event places with 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.[4][5] In total, 16 athletes qualified through achieving the OQT, while no athletes qualified through universality places.[5]
Heats
Two heats took place on 28 July 2024, starting at 11:15.[a][6] The swimmers with the best eight times in the heats advanced to the final.[7] Leon Marchand qualified with the fastest seed in the second heat, while Carson Foster won the first.[8] The USA's defending Olympic champion Chase Kalisz and Australia's defending Olympic bronze medallist Brendon Smith both failed to qualify.[9]Germany's Cedric Büssing qualified for the final in joint sixth place, breaking the nine-year-old national record with a time of 4:11.52 and becoming the first swimmer in the NCAA Division II to qualify for an Olympic final.[10][11]
The final took place at 20:30 on 28 July.[12] Léon Marchand led the race from start to finish, splitting the first 50 metres 0.65 ahead of his world record pace. He was also 0.19 ahead of his world record at 350 metres but lost this lead in the final 50 metres to finish in 4:02.95.[13][14] At the 100 and 200 metre marks, Daiya Seto was in second and was followed by Carson Foster in third, but over the breaststroke leg (200 – 300 m), Foster overtook Seto for second. Over the final 100 metres, Seto moved down to seventh while fellow Japanese swimmer Tomoyuki Matsushita moved up from fifth to second, pushing Foster to third and claiming the silver medal with a time of 4:08.62.[13]SwimSwam later said that Matsushita's silver medal "might have been the most unexpected" swim at the Paris Olympics.[15] Foster finished the race in third with 4:08.66, winning the bronze.[13]Great Britain's Max Litchfield finished fourth for the third consecutive Olympics with a time of 4:08.85—a new national record.[16][17]
During the breaststroke leg of the race, the crowd cheered "allez!" (French for "go") each time Marchand's head was above the water. SwimSwam later reported that "For that brief period during tonight’s session, it was a symbiotic relationship between Marchand and the crowd", and Marchand later said "The atmosphere was amazing, I don’t know how to explain it".[18]
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