"A lot of harm has already been done. We can go back if there is a strong will. But the damage is done. I hope coaches are moved to take a stand. I'm tired, disappointed for my swimmers. I don't recognise some swimmers. One is disillusioned. And what's it all for? A swimmer you coach for 10 years, that gets up at six every day to swim, who swims 10,000km a year, does five hours of weights a week. All that reduced to nothing by a suit? Marvelous." - Denis Auguin, coach to Alan Bernard, the first sub-47 man.

In a heartfelt appeal for the sport to stop the damage done by fast suits, Auguin called on coaching colleagues at French nationals to show solidarity and oppose the use of suits that are enhancing performance to a wild level. He got nowhere. "We were in a minority here," he said.  

Coaches down the pecking order appear to see two things: those ahead of them also wearing fast suits of one variety or another; and the chance to get swimmers on a national team, so bugger the fact that it relies on an artificial prop. If you keep telling people that its just all the hard work and smartness, if you keep talking about perfect storms, they'll believe you. Then again, perhaps they won't.

"It's a pity," says Auguin. "We could have sent a strong signal." The strongest three signals of the week were the Bernard world record in a suit not yet approved, and the two off-the-chart performances of Fred Bousquet. If that does not confirm what we all know, nothing will. It also told us that swimming is fast sliding down a slippery slope: the suit wars is a conveyor belt: it will get worse and worse until FINA either intervenes or throws the sport to the sharks (predators that will in time devour FINA for breakfast with a smile on their faces).

 "These types of materials favour lesser swimmers. The apearance of new suits last year accelerated things. On the other hand the finishing places were the same ... The swimmer who was 18th or 40th before was not 2nd or 3rd," said Auguin, who has obviously forgotten some results: such as an Italian women's 4x200m free team the fastest European quartet, inside 7:50. Never before. Not even close. The examples are legion, and many of them can be found among those who wore the LZR, not just the suits that came to the fore in time for the Rijeka riot.

"Here," says Auguin. "We have seen extraordinary results. That's not to say that those swimmers haven't worked hard or are in some way to blame. I'm sure they trained very hard. It is a case of the swimming environment having failed to take good decisions." He added: "I saw this crisis coming because I saw the Spanish nationals, at which the backstroke Wildeboer (Aschwin) after setting the European 100m back record clearly stated 'I'm not in the kind of shape to get to that time'. That takes nothing away from his performance - the others were wearing the same material. But he had the honesty to tell it like it was."

Auguin, speaking to the press via suit maker Arena, which has long been opposed to the suit wars and made clear to FINA in 2008 that it should not have approved polyurethane, neoprene and similar types of "smart" fabrics never before seen in race suits in the pool, said that the suits were ironing out "to an incredible extent" the faults of lesser swimmers. His explanation boils down to two things: swimmers with a poor or problematic angle of buoyancy that can only be corrected by years of work on core strength and technique are being "corrected by the suit and being transformed "overnight" into bullets; and he suits work differently for different people, favouring natural talents with natural gifts in water less than those without such gifts, and therefore skewing the result in a truly significant way.

"When Coralie Balmy swims 200m free with that suit (Jaked), she believes it makes hardly any difference. Of course, she already has the level of expertise of the two or three best swimmers in the world. She gets little advantage. The improvements of some swimmers - 3, 4 and 5 seconds [200m] are unimaginable," says Auguin and then states that such equipment will be banned by January 1, 2010. That is yet to be seen. And what of Rome? Will it be a circus once more?

 Whenever the axe falls, that moment will be "dramatic" for some swimmers and some coaches", says Auguin. There are some like me who ask ... what will come of that? An athlete trains 10 years for a world championship and when it arrives, they change the rules? And how will coaches explain that their swimmers have swum 4 seconds slower when all the time they have been saying 'the suit doesn't help much'."

 He notes that questions were raised in his mind at the Euro s/c championships in Rijeka, with the wearing of multiple suits. "Fred Bousquet's American coach did some tests," says Auguin. "In the first 15m of the race, the gain is 25cms. That's colossal. That means you gain 25cms on your rivals at the start. At that speed [47.15 and 20.94], it means 60cms. Imagine the psychological impact on a swimmer who has 60cms [advantage] at the start of a 50m race. You get off at that speed, it is easier to come back. That was measured by radar, its very serious."

Auguin said that all the records that fell are only as good as the material that propelled them: they related only to other performances in such suits. He said that some young swimmers would struggle in the years ahead if "this type of material" is banned. Some had chose to swim every race in the Jaked and they had no reference point to tell them where they really stood in relation to what they could swim in a normal suit. Hence why Bernard, after that sub-47sec 100m in a suit yet to be approved, donned a suit far less "problematic" in nature to go 47.51 in the final behind Bousquet's Jaked-propelled 47.15 win. "It would be interesting to see what all swimmers did in a 'classic' suit," said Auguin. FINA is the body that can deliver the result.

 He repeated the mantra that fast suits have caused a serious problem in talent spotting and youth programmes. How to know which swimmers were true talents and which were benefitting most from a suit? The answer: stop juniors wearing such suits at all. 

But the problem was also having a damaging effect in senior waters. He cited as an example Christophe Lebon, third at a European championship but now fifth at home over 100m 'fly and out of the world championships. "He is a boy who has been extremely destabilised by the suits," says Auguin. "When you see a boy who usually goes 2:01 drop to a 1:57 in three weeks, I can understand why that would be destabilising. It's like going to war with a [toy] plastic gun."

"Some swimmers missed selection because of reasons independent of their hard work, simply because they were not wearing the right material," said Auguin of the French nationals. What swimmers wore was having a psychological impact on them, he noted. "It is truly hard for a swimmer to start a race at ease. We know how important confidence is to performance. We've seen swimmers in great form here, who through lack of confidence and not being at ease have underperformed."

The job of France's top coaches was now to get the message out to swimmers that all will be back to square one by January 1, 2010, said Auguin. Personally, he would like to see a stop to all compression suits and smart fabrics but could see complications. Already for Rome, the US might be holding trials under a different set of "rules", or rather circumstances, to others who have raced before FINA's deliberations. Whatever the outcome, he would not be surprised to see no French records broken in 2010. It would have been "normal" to expect 10 to 12 French records fall at nationals, not 29.

 A whole generation of swimmers had grown up believing  that suits evolve and that was normal. But fast suits should not be the "souvenirs" of their careers. That was "very detrimental" to the sport ... a lot of harm has already been done. We can go back if there is a strong will. But the damage is done. I hope coaches are moved to take a stand," he said, while noting that coaches had no power to legislate. No, but then boycotting entire events and so forth would be pretty powerful. As Auguin says, it depends on will. He noted that there was momentum among coaches in Rijeka but that "nothing had come of it". He asks: "Is the will really there? I don't know."

He noted the awkward position of coaches: perform and get rewarded, elevated. To do, you had to have swimmers wearing the "right" suits. Swimmers and coaches risked losing money and support if they decided not to wear performance-enhancing suits, he indicated. Pressure from suit makers was all around. As such, swimmers were not to blame, were not responsible for the mess. He cited cases where programmes had taken a stand, such as Canada cutting the LZR out of its trials but then finding that Canadian swimmers had not "adapted" to the suit by the Games. "If there's a will," he adds. "But not in France."

"Today," he adds, "I'm tired, disappointed for my swimmers. I don't recognise some swimmers. One is disillusioned. And what's it all for? A swimmer you coach for 10 years, that gets up at six every day to swim, who swims 10,000km a year, does five hours of weights a week. All that reduced to nothing by a suit? Marvelous."

Translation from the French transcript by Craig Lord.