The file that follows will be accessible from a link at the end of all live swim reports until FINA enforces a suits regime that no longer requires the performances of swimmers to be regarded in the shade and shadow of what they are wearing. SwimNews has been at the forefront of the campaign to return swimming back to being a technique-based sport since it became clear in early 2008 that a storm was approaching and that the sport was fast becoming an equipment-based sport. We reject the notion that our reports are "negative". Negativity is in the water in the form of a generation of suits that enhance performance and have converted swimming from a technique-based sport to an equipment-based sport.

Here is a brief chronology of events to remind readers of what has happened and where swimming is on the return journey to being a technique-based sport in which the work of athletes and coaches is not overshadowed by a suit that enhances performances in a truly significant way in different ways for different swimmers on different strokes and distances. Ultimately, the significance of the fast suits is unquantifiable, as is the difference in advantages gained by different swimmers in different events. All of which  means that performance itself is unquantifiable. Context and worth are lost.

A whirlwind chronology of performance-enhancing apparel and the suits crisis of 2008-09:

February 16 2008: Speedo launches the LZR racer, with polyurethane panels. The suit has never been tested by FINA in any scientific way. The suit is the first approved by FINA to allow the use of non-textile, non-permeable fabrics and its approval follows rejection of apparel with similar properties: Lowdon suits developed with the help of coach Lawrie Lawrence in the early 1980s were banned because they were said to aid buoyancy, which was against the spirit of FINA Rule SW10.7; Diana produced a suit using polyurethane panels before the LZR surfaced but was told that the suit had been rejected for use because of the difference in thickness in two materials combined in its suit.

Eve of world s/c championships, March, 2008: SwimNews urges caution - “Swimming has reached a watershed. Time to decide which way to go as technological advance takes hold of time and rattles it like a sapling in a sandstorm. Let’s be clear, all suit makers have new suits out for Olympic year, but just one has a product on its swimmers that has surfed 18 times into uncharted waters since February 16.”

August 18, 2008: The Beijing Games are over. Speedo was the biggest winner: 23 out of 25 world records set in the LZR Racer (92%); 94% of gold medals; 89% of all medals. The suit was truly significant to the result and rivals of Speedo, including some players that took an interest in the race suit market only because the LZR was allowed into the water took FINA's nod to Speedo as an invitation to find more durable suits that enhanced performance in an even more significant way. And they managed to do just that. SwimNews analysis proves beyond doubt that a seismic shift in the nature of the sport had taking place.

October 2008: SwimNews runs Suit Week in five parts:

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5.

The files are considered by FINA lawyers

November 16, 2008: SwimNews breaks the news that FINA was about to change its mind. The international federation announced that a Think Tank would be held in February.

November 23, 2008: Led by concern among members of the American Swimming Coaches Association, led by John Leonard, the USA votes to ban the bodysuit and urges FINA to take urgent measures.  The amount of skin covered is critical to the darkest aspect of the fast-suits debate: the ability of smart fabrics to stimulate the central nervous system and influence heart rate, lung and other vital functions.

November 30: adidas sources indicate to SwimNews that one of the biggest sports apparel players in the world is considering a move away from the sport of swimming if FINA fails to find the right answer; contract with DSV in serious doubt. Nike has already decided to abandon the sport at a time when fast suits dominate the sport.

December 5, 2008: Dale Neuburger becomes the first member of the FINA Bureau to call for action against the unwelcome advance of suit technology and its negative impact on swimming

December 11-14, 2008: the European short-course championships witnesses a bloom of newcomer suits to the blocks, while the practice of wearing two, three and even four suits at the same time is the order of the day.

December 13, 2008: A poolside protest of coaches takes place in Rijeka and a petition is handed in demanding that LEN consider the damage being done to the sport. The petition raises the issue that has raised much concern in the US and Australia: talent identification. Both the USA and Australia vote to bar the "fast" bodysuits from youth racing.

December 14, 2008: LEN responds with a pledge to hand the petition to FINA and press for a new suits regime. Denis Pursley, former US head coach and now GBR head coach, says: "Seeing so many world records fall in one year demeans their value. It's like cheating to some extent." He added that he was "very concerned that we could soon see individual suits being tailored for specific individuals. That would take the whole sport in a very different direction." If suit design before this year had "helped to maximise performance", the suits of 2008 had "enhanced performance", he said, adding: "A line has been crossed."

December 15, 2008: 108 world records have fallen since February 2008, but the advance at the helm is the tip of an iceberg. The world all-time rankings have been transfigured wide and deep by a tidal wave of gains on the clock from a diverse number of countries and programmes around the world, many with one key thing in common: a suit.

December 19, 2008: Australia throws its weight behind moves to rid swimming of performance-enhancing suits.

February 22, 2009: FINA meets coaches and suit makers at its headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

March 14, 2009: FINA launches the Dubai Charter and independent testing of suits. It took FINA, the international swimming federation, almost a year to catch up, by which time more than 125 world records had fallen in the race pool and the all-time world ranking lists of the sport had been transformed almost beyond recognition. What was the men's 50m freestyle world record on February 1, 2008 (21.64sec to quadruple Olympic champion Alex Popov, Russia) was outside the best 20 performances ever a little over a year later. In April, Fred Bousuet, of France, almost half a second than Popov's best in 2007 is now 0.7sec faster with a time of 20.94, set in a suit (Jaked01) that within weeks was banned by FINA. The record had yet to be ratified but may well be because in June 2008, FINA approved the Jaked01 long before introducing independent suit tests.

May 18, 2009: FINA reveals an approved suits list, which cuts out 136 models that failed lenient tests for buoyancy. Makers of rejected suits are given a month in which to modify and resubmit suits for retesting. Three of the suits rejected by FINA, the Jaked01, the arena X-Glide and the Descente Aquaforce, were worn in March and April by swimmers on the way to nine world records that by the second week in June had yet to be ratified.

June 3, 2009: As one suit maker prepares to sue FINA for compensation running to $10,000 a day, the key casualty of the suits debacle is the president of FINA, Mustapha Larfaoui , who let it be known that he has stepped down from the race to retain the presidency of the international federation and in doing so will lose his place at the IOC table.

From January 1, 2010: it is expected that the sport of swimming will return to the use of textile-only suits , with a ban on the full bodysuit (arms, as worn by Ian Thorpe in Sydney 2000, have already been banned) to follow sometime next year as FINA imposes limits of the amount of skin that may be covered by material.