High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Men`s 200 metre individual medley event at the 2008 Olympic Games took place between August 13 and 15, at the Beijing National Aquatics Center. This swimming event used medley swimming. Because an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, this race consisted of four lengths of the pool. The first length was swum using the butterfly stroke, the second with the backstroke, the third length in breaststroke, and the fourth freestyle. Unlike other events using freestyle, swimmers could not use butterfly, backstroke, or breaststroke for the freestyle leg; most swimmers use the front crawl in freestyle events anyway.