 In the 400 m freestyle heats, Windle and Talbot made a misjudgement; in an attempt to conserve his energy for the final they decided that Windle should not go flat out, and Windle was four seconds slower than he was at the Australian Championships. Windle was one of the top seeds for the race, and Talbot advised him to swim hard in the first half of the race before slowing down. However, he swam too slowly and missed the final completely. Although he won his heat by seven seconds in a time of 4 min 21.6 s, he was the ninth fastest overall, so he missed the final by one position with a time deficit of 0.5 s. The slowest qualifier was Tsuyoshi Yamanaka, who had been prevented from withdrawing from the race by his coaches. On the other hand, the two other Australian representatives who he defeated at the national championships did make the final, including Wood, who went on to win bronze. Talbot said that the tactical error was mostly his responsibility and that he learnt a lot from it.
