Comment related to moves by USA Swimming on suits and dark news from the world of science:

God Bless America, as they say. The same strength applied in the pool is now being applied in the boardroom: the thing to do when you’ve taken the wrong road is to back track, find a better route to progress, come out fighting and ready to win again. 

Those who feel a strong urge to point a finger and say ‘but all of this high-tech stuff was driven by the USA ...’ should resist. It should never be too late for the captain of a ship to spot the iceberg, resolve to save lives and change course as fast as possible to ensure a happy outcome. Time for FINA to heed the warning and act decisively – or there may no longer be a ship worth sailing, sooner than those who govern the sport appear to realise. 

History often shows us that humans are slow to respond to incoming storms. That is the case whether you consider the most important of events, such as the onset of war or climate change. In a small corner of our world, swimming was slow to wake up to doping. It paid a hefty price – or rather the athletes on both sides of the coin, whether through loss of medal and place in history or loss of health and happiness for life, paid a price. Now there is a new threat. It is not one to be taken lightly. It is not science fiction. It is of this world. 

If FINA fails in its role as guardian of the sport, then the doping suit will be at a pool near you all too soon; the doping suit will be on your child’s skin all too soon. Ridiculous? Tell that to the scientists who know not only that it can be done but know too that they can make oodles of money from it and that the rules of the sport cannot prevent them from doing so. 

When doctors, pharmacists and politicians sat around a table to discuss State Plan 14:25 in the GDR, they were in much the same position: there were no rules in sport to stop them feeding steroids to 12 and 13 years old girls (the rules came later) – and when eventually some brave men and women stood up and said “did you realise that some of these women will become men, that many will never be able to carry a child to birth, that many will have liver and kidney failure, that many will spend their lives on medication to stem the tide of side-effects”, they were told to shut up or lose their status in life. Some even had good reason to fear for their lives. The secret had to kept. Reputation and political supremacy depended on it. For those who plotted State Plan 14:25, it was too late to turn back once the rules were in place. There was a point to be made.

Time and the human spirit did for State Plan 14:25, though not its consequences. FINA was left with a record book and result sheet that served as a permanent reminder of the abomination that visited the sport of swimming throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The evidence of that was all too available in the early 1990s but it took another tragedy - the China Crisis, in which generations of children were fed those same old harmful substances and new ones to boot (and who knows how many have paid a heavy price) – and a tidal wave of protest from coaches, swimmers and media for those who govern swimming to say “enough is enough”, we need to find a solution. In the end, FINA showed itself most capable of good governance. 

 All those lessons learned, it would be unforgivable for anyone connected with a single vote, a single strand of power in FINA not to heed the warnings of the past year and those now emerging from a scientific world capable of poisoning the pool with technology that has been known to the military for a fair few years now. How many federations, from Australia down through the success-rating of nations, will follow the American lead? How many will show true leadership and understanding of their role as temporary guardians of institutions whose longevity depends on their foresight?  

In Berlin last weekend, Cornel Marculescu confirmed to SwimNews that he will be meeting coaches in January and suit makers in February. There is some confusion about whether those meetings constitute a Think Tank, some concern about whether FINA ought to give this issue the weight it gave to marketing, with a full forum of “partners”. The partners in the suit debate go well beyond the suit makers and the director’s instincts – unsurprisingly for a man who has been instrumental in bringing the best part of $200m into the pool over the past 15 years or so - are correct: engage in a process that considers the views of the leading parties to the debate on suits and technology. There need be no confusion. Deadlines provide clarity and clarity must emerge before the FINA Bureau meets in March.

It was, he said in Berlin a week ago, time to take stock. Time for sensible solutions to be found. He is right. But this cannot be and cannot be seen to be a FINA fudge. The issue is too important. Where is the view of the President of FINA? Where is the view of the man who aspires to topple the President at Congress next July? Where are the views of the world’s leading federations? So far, they appear to be like the three wise monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

They need to heed the fourth monkey often missing from the picture: Shizaru symbolises the principle of "do no evil". In this case, that translates as ‘time to stand up and be counted’. Doing nothing is not an option. It is for that reason that the board of USA Swimming has read the runes and decided to act. Swimming has much to thank them for. And much to thank FINA for if it now comes up with a way of facing the future confident in the knowledge that the future will be friend not foe.

Any rule changes agreed by FINA at Congress in Rome would not come into force for 60 days after the World Championships. But where there is a will there is a way. FINA sets its own rules and when the Bureau meets in March only a will to do nothing and delay, only a wish and a hope and a prayer in vain that all of this will go away (it will not), can stop the governing body from stating loud and clear: this is too serious an issue and time is not on our side; let us act decisively now and put in place a solution as fast as we put in place a generation of suits (no vote at Congress needed) that have transfigured the sport of swimming.

Those suits were deemed to represent “progress”. They certainly delivered that on the clock. And how (56 of the all-time top 100 fastest 100 backstroke times for women, including the best 15 ever, were clocked since February this year; average number of entries in the previous five Olympic years: 24)! The suits also made a break with the past that not everyone is happy with. The conditions of competition changed: the suit has become a device that enhances performance in a way that we have never known before.

Speedo set out to steal a march on rivals – and won. Good for Speedo. Its intentions were never to lead the sport to any nightmare scenario where science overtook the swimmer. The intentions of those in FINA who were glad to embrace all of this – and the $4m or so of funds from suit makers – were not bad. And yet, the sport of swimming has slipped at the start, false-started into a pond that might have best been avoided. In the past couple of months, swimming has witnessed a suit circus, a flood of new suit brands and world records have been set in garments that were unknown in the sport at the beginning of the year. 

It is not too late to change course and neither FINA nor anyone in the swimming world at large need to fear reprisal or loss of reputation as forward-thinking and wedded to promoting and evolving the sport.

Watching Tracey Chapman on her world solo tour in Dresden this week, I was reminded of just how sweet, how uplifting, how glorious the purity of the human voice can be. Yes, the performance was amplified through a traditional microphone. But when she stood under a single lamp light and sang “Last night I heard the screaming, loud voices behind the wall ...”, there was a tangible tinkling of skin throughout an audience spellbound by the natural capacity of a single human being. It was thrilling.

Swimming heard the screaming from behind a particular Wall in the 1970s and 1980s but never did get round to doing anything about a problem born in the laboratory of an East German pharmaceutical company that would later, irony of sick ironies, win something called the “Golden Pill Award for services to women”. The screaming is now coming from a different science lab. It should not be ignored and no-one should be persuaded that what it has to offer is an irresistible show that would somehow swamp swimming in money and elevate it to the status of tennis and gold in the ranks of popular world sports.

You don’t need razzmatazz and trickery to make the show a blast. You need quality. You need Popov v Hall Jr in 1996; you need Hall Jr eight years on and winning in briefs in 2004, you need Darnyi to Dolan, Evans to Egerszegi, Gould v the girls from the USA; Gross winging his way down the pool; Goodell, Hackett and Holland battling stroke for stroke; Spitz on his way to seven and the man who gave the impression that he might well have won eight whether naked or weighted down by a diver’s metal suit, helmet and all (and was happy, we note, to wear no more than shorts on his journey through space and time). 

You need swimmers to appear more often, be more visible. FINA is exploring ways to make that happen. They offer great potential. They do not require a supersuit, less still a doping suit. They do not require a bodysuit of any kind.

Why cover up one of the greatest visible assets of our sport: how many sports can boast the kind of physiques to be seen in the pool? Did the IOC not add beach volleyball to its mix for the spice of it all? Stripping back the bodysuit in favour of more skin is not retrograde. On the contrary. There is so much to look forward to in a swim back to skin, both for athletes and for the traditional suit makers who provide the kit. 

FINA take heed. Ignore at your peril the very sound recommendations of  USA Swimming; the recommendations that will soon land on your desk from coaches who know what they have witnessed better than most, who work with children and mature, world-class athletes day in and day out and have done in many cases for many a long year; the warnings from the world of science.

No-one needs to be blame, no-one needs to lose face if the sport ends its relatively short love affair with the high-tech bodysuit. Everyone has everything to gain from  rule changes that remove today the strong likelihood of a head-on collision tomorrow. FINA has a chance to show that it remains the best guardian of swimming and that the sport is mature and forward-thinking. 

The governing body has a not-to-be-missed opportunity to show true leadership now. That starts with canvassing the views of coaches, federations, swimmers, scientists and suit makers. It ends not with the imposition of a set of rules that can be shot down in flames within moments of their release but with a set of rules that can serve as a shield to unwelcome influence in the years ahead. Act now and the sport can genuinely draw a line and move on; fail to act and the sport will be locked into a controversy of its own making, one in which the theme music to every great swim will be: what were they wearing? A sport dotted with asterisks is a sport that loses its appeal. 

Talk from the deck among coaches and certain federation figures who are keen to see a return to common sense is that a moratorium on all new suit approvals would be sensible prior to Rome 2009. That would provide swimming with a period of calm in which to lay down the foundations for a future that need not fear the threat of a freak show fit to send the sport the way of the Roman Circus: extinction.