The men's 1500 metre freestyle event at the 1952 Olympic Games took place between July 31 and August 2, at the Swimming Stadium

Helsinki Swimming Stadium

Helsinki Swimming Stadium is an outdoors swimming venue in Helsinki, Finland, located in the Eläintarha area to the northeast of the Helsinki Olympic Stadium.-History:...

. This swimming

Swimming (sport)

Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...

 event used freestyle swimming

Freestyle swimming

Freestyle is an unregulated swimming style used in swimming competitions according to the rules of FINA. The front crawl stroke is almost universally used during a freestyle race, as this style is generally the fastest...

, which means that the method of the stroke is not regulated (unlike backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly events). Nearly all swimmers use the front crawl

Front crawl

The front crawl, forward crawl, or freestyle is a swimming stroke usually regarded as the fastest of the four front primary strokes. As such, the front crawl stroke is nearly universally used during a freestyle swimming competition, hence the synonymously used term "freestyle". It is one of two...

 or a variant of that stroke. Because an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, this race consists of 30 lengths of the pool.

Even though the top three swimmers were from different countries, all of them were of Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese origin. Ford Konno

Ford Konno

Ford Hiroshi Konno is a former freestyle swimmer from the United States, who swam at McKinley High School and the Ohio State University....

 was Japanese American

Japanese American

are American people of Japanese heritage. Japanese Americans have historically been among the three largest Asian American communities, but in recent decades have become the sixth largest group at roughly 1,204,205, including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity...

 and Tetsuo Okamoto

Tetsuo Okamoto

Tetsuo Okamoto was a Brazilian swimmer. He was a bronze medalist at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki , the first Brazilian swimmer to win a medal at the Olympics...

 was Japanese Brazilian.

Medalists

Final

Rank	Athlete	Country	Time	Notes
	Ford Konno Ford Konno Ford Hiroshi Konno is a former freestyle swimmer from the United States, who swam at McKinley High School and the Ohio State University....		18:30.3	OR
	Shiro Hashizume Shiro Hashizume . He won the silver medal in the men's 1500m freestyle at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. He broke the world record in the same event on August 16, 1949, clocking 18:35.7...		18:41.4
	Tetsuo Okamoto Tetsuo Okamoto Tetsuo Okamoto was a Brazilian swimmer. He was a bronze medalist at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki , the first Brazilian swimmer to win a medal at the Olympics...		18:51.3
4	Jimmy McLane		18:51.5
5	Jo Bernardo		18:59.1
6	Yasuo Kitamura		19:00.4
7	Peter Duncan		19:12.1
8	John Marshall John Marshall (swimmer) John Birnie Marshall was an Australian freestyle swimmer of the 1940s and 1950s who won a silver and bronze medal in the 1500 m and 400 m freestyle respectively at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London...		19:53.4

Key: OR = Olympic record