Preview Swimming at the 1980 Summer Olympics – Men's 4 × 100 metre medley relay

the 1980 summer olympic games notable large number of boycotting countries result of host country invading afghanistan in 1979. result, several medal favorites men s 4 × 100 metre medley relay race absent. notable absence united states, had won event every time since inception @ 1960 games, invariably large margins, , go on win event @ subsequent games. furthermore, had obtained gold medal @ previous world championships, 2 years before olympiad. this, boycott of silver , bronze medallists previous edition, west germany—who won silver medal @ world championships—and canada respectively, meant field had opened.

sweden, great britain, , soviet union heavily favoured teams. ten national olympic committees able send teams moscow: angola, australia, brazil, bulgaria, east germany, france, hungary, netherlands, spain, , vietnam. favorites soviet union boasted silver medalists in 100 m finals hosted several days earlier in backstroke , breaststroke (viktor kuznetsov , arsens miskarovs respectively), while butterflyer (yevgeny seredin) , freestyler (sergey kopliakov) had come fifth , fourth in respective 100 m events. british team included 100 m breaststroke gold medallist (duncan goodhew), , fifth-place finisher in 100 m backstroke (gary abraham). sweden s butterflyer (pär arvidsson) , backstroker (bengt baron) had won respective 100 m events, , freestyle swimmer (per holmertz) had come second in 100 m, while lowest ranked swimmer, breaststroker (peter berggren), had come ninth in 100 m event.

the australians regarded outside chance medal, not seen main threats, ranked seventh coming olympics out of 13 competing countries. in 5 times event had been contested, australia had won silver in inaugural race in rome, , bronze medal in tokyo in 1964. on paper, australia s team appeared weaker of other favorites: peter evans individual medalist in distance, claiming bronze in 100 m breaststroke, while neil brooks, freestyler, , mark kerry, backstroker, had been eliminated in respective semifinals, , mark tonelli swimming makeshift butterflyer.