100m free. At 17, Michael Phelps's best was 51.98, Ian Thorpe's was 49.71, at 18 Gary Hall Jr boasted a 50.91 pb and Matt Biondi had yet to crack 51 at the same age. Alain Bernard did not crack 52 until he was 19, at 20, Alex Popov had got down to 49.18, while Pieter Van Den Hoogenband was on a 50.32 at 17 and 49.13 at 18.

Little wonder, then that Gaul is making such a fuss over a 17-year-old Frenchman called Yannick Agnel, triple Euro junior champ, a boy who took the same approach as Popov did on bodysuits (don't need 'em, don't want 'em), boasts looks fit to turn heads and technique fit to make a dolphin blush, stands 2m 01 tall and can lay claim to a pb of 48.99 as of today.

Agnel, of Nice, has some power to pile on his stick-like arms, needs "8 to 10 months more work to know how to race 100m" better and is still doing a third of the work of some rivals and the amount he is building up to, Fabrice Pellerin, says his coach.

As AFP put it: "He is only 17 years old, a smile of angel and ... has a fierce desire to unstitch with the best swimmers of the world, his compatriots Alain Bernard, Frédérick Bousquet or Amaury Leveaux".

"If you're listening Amaury, bring it on , I'm going to have a good time, this is going to be brilliant! " said Agnel to the media on the eve of trials in Saint-Raphael. His nod to Leveaux was aimed not at the 100m but the 200m, the world s/c sprint champ and his new coach Fred Vergnoux having indicated that four laps is what they were working towards.

Agnel will be no easy task. Last month he challenged the French 200m record (1:46.54 is Leveaux's French record from 2008, Agnel clocked 1:46.83 in a warm-up meet at Nancy) and at trials this weekend, after what he has shown himself capable of in the 100m and 400m, the 200m could send smoke off the water.

Pellerin told the agency that to take the championships by storm would take breaking "the only French record that is beatable" in textile suits.

"It is not my aim," says Agnel, "... but it would be brilliant". Indeed it would. Pellerin describes his pupil as "auto-determined" (pre-conditioned for success, so to speak). Agnel is bright in and out of water, something he has in common with the folk in the first paragraph of this article. At the end of June, the teenager takes his baccalaureate before taking up a position at university or business school. 

Asked by reporters about his persistent wearing of briefs among the plastic fantastic suits of yesteryear, Agnel is reported to have smiled and said: "Me, I love to play with others" ... and their minds, perhaps.

A fun thing to do on the way up and with talent oozing from every stroke he takes. "I have nothing to prove," notes Agnel. "I just try to enjoy it and to focus on and improve my skills. I would be happy to take [a European senior crown] as the bonus! European championships, any events, on 200m and 400m. And if it is 100, then there it would really be wonderful!"

Surrounded by some of the best sprinters in the world, did he not feel the pressure? Agnel, according to Pellerin, said: "Pressure is the phenomenon by which coal is converted to diamond."

France and world swimming, it seems, has a gem in the making.