Swimming at the 1968 Ciudad de México Summer Games:

This was the final swimming event of the 1968 Olympics. The USA had won it in 1960 and 1964 and was again the clear favorite. On the opening leg, East Germany’s [Roland Matthes] put his team ahead with a world record of 58.0 for the 100 backstroke, with [Charles Hickcox] of the US over two seconds behind. On the breaststroke leg, 100 gold medalist [Don McKenzie] picked up a little ground on East German [Egon Henninger] but the Americans were still a full two seconds back. That changed on the butterfly as [Doug Russell] stormed by [Horst Gregor] and gave [Ken Walsh] a 1.6 second lead for the anchor leg. Walsh opened further to bring the US home in the world record time of 3:54.9 with East Germany second and the Soviet Union winning bronze.