Swimming at the 1956 Summer Olympics – Women's 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay

Swimming at the 1956 Summer Olympics
Freestyle
100 m	men		women
400 m	men		women
1500 m	men
Backstroke
100 m	men		women
Breaststroke
200 m	men		women
Butterfly
100 m			women
200 m	men
Freestyle relay
4×100 m			women
4×200 m	men

The women's 4×100 metre freestyle relay event at the 1956 Olympic Games took place on December 4 and 6.^[1] This swimming event used freestyle as a relay, with swimmers typically using the front crawl. Because an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, each of the four swimmers completed two lengths of the pool. The first swimmer had to touch the wall before the second could leave the starting block; timing of the starts was thus important.

Medalists

Gold	Silver	Bronze
Australia Dawn Fraser Faith Leech Sandra Morgan Lorraine Crapp	United States Sylvia Ruuska Shelley Mann Nancy Simons Joan Rosazza	South Africa Natalie Myburgh Susan Roberts Moira Abernethy Jeanette Myburgh

Results

Heats

Heat One

Place	Swimmers	Time	Notes
1	Natalie Myburgh, Susan Roberts, Moira Abernethy and Jeanette Myburgh (RSA)	4:26.8
2	Joan Rosazza, Betty Brey, Kay Knapp and Marley Shriver (USA)	4:27.3
3	Ingrid Künzel, Hertha Haase, Kati Jansen and Birgit Klomp (GER)	4:27.5
4	Frances Hogben, Judith Grinham, Margaret Girvan and Fearne Ewart (GBR)	4:34.6
5	Odile Vouaux, Viviane Gouverneur, Ginette Jany-Sendral and Héda Frost (FRA)	4:36.6

Heat Two

Place	Swimmers	Time	Notes
1	Sandra Morgan, Lorraine Crapp, Margaret Gibson and Elizabeth Fraser (AUS)	4:25.0
2	Mária Littomeritzky, Katalin Szőke, Judit Temes and Valéria Gyenge (HUN)	4:28.1
3	Helen Stewart, Gladys Priestley, Sara Barber and Virginia Grant (CAN)	4:29.3
4	Anita Hellström, Birgitta Wängberg, Karin Larsson and Kate Jobson (SWE)	4:30.1
5	Hitomi Jinno, Eiko Wada, Yoshiko Sato and Yukiko Otaka (JPN)	4:35.8

References