Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Women's 4 × 100 metre medley relay

The women's 4×100 metre medley relay event at the 2008 Olympic Games will take place on 15th (qualification) and 17th August (final) at the Beijing National Aquatics Centre. This swimming event used medley swimming as a relay. Because an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, each of the four swimmers completed two lengths of the pool. Each swimmer used a different stroke. The first on each team swam backstroke, the second used the breaststroke, the third swam butterfly stroke, and the final swimmer used freestyle (restricted to not allow any of the first three strokes to be used, though nearly all swimmers use front crawl regardless).

The first swimmer had to touch the wall before the next could leave the starting block, and so forth; timing of the starts was thus important.

Two heats were held, with each containing the maximum number of teams (eight). The heat in which a team competed did not formally matter for advancement, as the teams with the top eight times from the entire field qualified for the final; there, they all competed in a single final heat to earn final placements. A team could use different swimmers in the final than had swum in the heats.

16 nations competed at this event. These 16 nations consisted on the 12 best placed teams at the 2007 World Aquatics Championships plus the 4 best times after the qualifying period.

Records

Prior to this competition, the existing world and Olympic records were as follows.

World record	Australia (AUS) Emily Seebohm (1:00.79) Leisel Jones (1:04.94) Jessicah Schipper (57.18) Libby Lenton (52.83)	3:55.74	Melbourne, Australia	31 March 2007
Olympic record	Australia (AUS) Giaan Rooney (1:01.18) Leisel Jones (1:06.50) Petria Thomas (56.67) Jodie Henry (52.97)	3:57.32	Athens, Greece	21 August 2004	-

Qualification summary

Pos	NOC	Qualification
1	United States	FINA World Championships
2	Australia
3	Japan
4	China
5	Germany
6	Sweden
7	Russia
8	Great Britain
9	France
10	Italy
11	Canada
12	Ukraine
13	South Africa	4:03.62	4 best remaining teams
14	Netherlands	4:04.41
15	Brazil	4:04.88
16	Spain	4:05.98

Heats

2 heats