In this event, swimmers covered four lengths of the 50-metre (160 ft) Olympic-sized pool employing the breaststroke.

[2][3] Prior to this competition, the existing world and Olympic records were: Hungarian Éva Székely originally held the Olympic record in the event after swimming a time of 2:51.7 min four years ago.

[5] However Székely had used the butterfly stroke for her swim, which was now disallowed as a new 100 metres event had been introduced.

Éva Novák-Gerard's time of 2:54.0 min in 1952 at the same event was instead replaced as the current Olympic record.

This technique would later be disallowed by FINA in the late 1950s to ensure the majority of the race was swum on the surface.