Round Two is over. The work of Prof Jan-Anders Manson and team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Laboratory of Polymer and Composite Technology in Lausanne, the efforts of the world's leading coaches and those of the team at the FINA office lead by Cornel Marculescu, the executive director, are starting to take shape. The direction is sound, the finish line some way off.

Good news that the red-hot Jaked has gone, that certain wetsuit look-alikes have passed away, that FINA has drawn a line. Not a 2007 line just yet, though. The line is drawn at 2008 and many find themselves tonight saying:  second round to Speedo. It won the first round by surprise knockout last year.

That's part of the bad news, bad news that starts with a warning: caveat emptor. If the approved suits list is a little confusing with its numbers and names that do not tally with the name suits are actually known as, then worse still is the absence of what is to be resubmitted and what has not made it at all. How is the buyer supposed to know what to buy? How will the buyer know when he is being sold a pup?

As things are, Rome 2009 world titles will be run under the banner "back to 2008 - a little performance enhancement is ok, especially if it carries the right label". Such a stance has already come back to haunt FINA. The LZR, the device that started the era of suit-enhanced performance back in February 2008 and accounted for almost all of the widespread gains on the clock last year, remains in the water. It remains there in the face of the spirit of Rule SW10.7 that states that no device may "aid speed, buoyancy and endurance", it remains there despite the fact that we know it enhances performance. Don't take my word. Take Speedo's: the fastest suit in history is how the LZR was described recently by an executive linked to the suit maker. 

Last month the LZR was off the podium when it came to the race for fastest suit in history. Tonight, it looks a strong bet for Rome, just as it did for Beijing. The LZR was a problem, remains a problem. Speedo has been given plenty of time now to adjust to the future and has been given a lifeline by FINA as it faced a very choppy outlook in the fast suits market as rivals found ways to make their suits "faster" and cheaper and more durable. Game over. Unless you remove the rivals, of course, some say.

Not hard to see what they mean. To a point I agree. To this point: "fast fabrics" should be cut out of the sport. That would undoubtedly sound the death knell for the LZR. And that sound is the only one that will send the right message to the sport. If we must see more of 2008, then let it be on the basis that 2010 fits better with 2007.

Rome 2009 will not be what it should be but it will be better than the full-on Circus Maximus that it might have been, it will be better than Rijeka, than a season of nationals that transfigured the all-time world rankings, better than the worst it could have been. All of which is cheering. 

But anyone minded to raise a glass in a spirit of satisfaction or Schadenfreude this evening should keep the cork in a while longer: FINA and its independent testers have much work to do yet. 

In no particular order, though the first one is paramount for the here and now:

• Brazilian sources tell SwimNews that more than 200 Jaked 01 suits were sold at the recent fast-forward Maria Lenk Trophy, at US$700 each. Complaints from swimmers who within a week of purchase had already ripped their suits have been too many. Who will compensate those swimmers? Ought it to be the company that made the suit? On the basis of a normal commercial transaction, Jaked may wish to talk to its customers. Blueseventy's revenue  must have soared while FINA deliberated. What happens now to all those many thousands of swimmers who bought a blueseventy? No mention of that suit on the list despite this from blueseventy’s CEO Steve Nicholls: "We’ve been involved, along with FINA and the other major manufacturers for the last few months in making sure that our products are meeting any restrictions, both in the immediate and long term future. Phase one should not affect the legality of our current suits at all." Is the blueseventy absence a clerical error, perhaps? Not sure. What is certain is that on the basis of what Nicholls said, many, many suits were sold. Where does responsibility rest?
• All of which highlights another of FINA's pressing responsibility: it must publish a list of banned suits without fail, without hesitation; it must publish a list of suits pending modifications too. Caveat emptor. The international federation must make sure that people are not wasting their money. Clarity is the key.
• Which leads us to this: since the "approved" list was published, I have been inundated with questions from readers asking such things as "what is a Jaked 03"; "is the "III jan09 full" by arena/descente the one that Ryosuke Irie wore or was that one of the Mar09 suits ... or was it something else?", and so on. If I were a swimming official right now, or a buying parent or swimmer or a coach, I would be looking at that list and scratching my head beyond the obvious entries. TYR's models are numbers, for example. They mean Tracer Rise, the Tracer Light and a suit described as being "in development". That may mean that the TYR Titan failed the test and is now being recast.
• Suit makers who had models rejected can resubmit. That means that some approved models will make it to the market five weeks before Rome. 
• Which takes us to availability: the farcical "suit room" situation in which swimmers could pick up a Speedo LZR in Beijing, supposedly, on demand (which was not the case) will be repeated at the world championships this summer, it seems, with suit makers about to be told that they must have approved suits on tap and in a variety of shapes and sizes should any swimmer turn up and ask to try one out. How that will fit into the aim of having every suit handed in for bar-code tagging a few days out from the start of racing remains to be seen.
• Affordability: some of the suits that have gone were at the affordable and endurable end of the overpriced devices with a ludicrously short shelf life that have made the elite end of the sporty inaccessible to some over the past year.
• Records: where will the axe fall? All world short-course records, including those set in blueseventy, have already been ratified, so no going back there, perhaps. The world records set in the Jaked 01 and arena X-Glide fall into 2 categories: the arena suit was never approved in the form that Alain Bernard wore on the way to 46.94 over 100m freestyle and Yulia Efimova wore on the way to that 30.02 50m breaststroke time; the Jaked 01 was, it seems, approved BUT, all the world records set by swimmers wearing that model - Munoz, Bousquet - unfolded AFTER the March 31 re-approval deadline, in suit purgatory, in no-man's land, as it were. Are decisions to count from March 31? That would make sense if fairness is the aim and you don't want world records on your books that are tainted by the words "suit deemed illegal within days or weeks". 
• An interesting theory: if Alain Bernard's 100m world record does not count, but Fred Bousquet's 50m does count, then Bousquet also becomes European 100m free record holder. Get set to revisit those continental and national record books all yon federations that thought they were just casual bystanders.

What FINA has not solved:

• Cost of suits
• Thread of history is still lost (pre-Feb 2008 is what is needed)
• The record bull run started with the LZR and still accounts for the bulk: the problem remains in the water
• How now to rid the world of swimming of the widely held perception that Speedo owns FINA?

So to the future of the sport. FINA is working on January 1, 2010, the next deadline for regime change on suits. Buoyancy tests will be tougher and more discerning. Debate centres of non-permeable "fabrics". The LZR uses them. That is one reason why it should go in current form. Will Prof Manson now seek out the science that exists in laboratories beyond his own, seek out the swimming-specific knowledge that he will need to overcome the political will to keep the suits of "partners" in the water even though it is obvious that they should go?

There are some questions that are not for Prof Manson to answer but will influence his "independent" work, such as: why have non-permeable "fabrics" in suits? Why negate the effect of water? Some degree of permeability is necessary in all parts of a suit if you want to watch swimming and not sailing of surfing. 

Let the water speak, let the swimmer understand the element and learn how to befriend it. Breathe life back into the art and grace and beauty of swimming, the things that should be written about once more but have been washed away in a sea of fast suits since February 2008.

Such things depend not only on "FINA". To some extent, the whole sport is FINA, and, most certainly, domestic federations must be beckoned out of the shadows when it comes to responsibility, so many of them too ready to say: "it's a FINA matter" when they know full well that they are FINA.

It is up to coaches too. In a world where instant gratification often counts for more than long-term planning and painstaking preparation, there will always be swimmers who seek out the next "I-must-have" formula to success, for a minority at any price. 

But hear the words of this coach: "It's not that the swimmer's ideas don't matter, but their ideas are a direct reflection of what we've reinforced. And the "we" is all of us. Coaches are overwhelmingly turning around. Swimmers would probably not be against climbing out and running down the pool deck, climbing into a cannon and being shot across the pool, etc. if we made that available. With the suits, we did. It's wrong. It's up to us to fix it. People like growth hormone too. They like watching home runs. Big strong athletes are our heroes, even if they sacrifice their health to get that way. The players in baseball are against drug restrictions as a whole or at least the testing. The league opened the door by looking the other way. Now they are doing something about it. It's not popular in some circles. It's up to us to clean the glass."

"With these suits everything so far has been pretty obvious. They provide a severe competitive advantage for all who wear them. But what people aren't getting is that they provide a differential advantage - either by design (Speedo scanning "their" sponsored swimmers) or by chance (a swimmer who is negative buoyant because of heavy musculature and bones potentially has a greater advantage than an ectomorph or a fat swimmer is held in form where she might have fallen out of form without the suit versus a swimmer who had a strong lean trained core). 

"But, as in the drug wars, this is just the first generation of the problems and it's a generation where most (not all) of the "players" aren't street smart. It's easy to see, if you're watching, that the next level is the custom "improvement" of swim suits as equipment. 

"I have spent the last six months testing and tweaking and designing and investing in equipment that improves power in competitive swimmers. I got our swim bench to rotate. I filmed exercises joint by joint and movement by movement and brought in all the work I had done on cadence assisted training with tubing and in the water and applied it to isokinetics. I developed relationships with those who design such equipment. It's very frustrating to watch everyone focussed on swim suits. Isn't our role to improve the power and long-term health of athletes? What would Doc say about all of this? Would he be proud to win an NCAA championship or have a swimmer break a record because his swimmers had special suits on? I wonder if some of his coolest inventions and adaptations might have been ignored - the use of the pace clock for example - if you cold go faster because of what you wore.

"We have to persevere. We have to set the example. We have to demand of FINA and other leaders that they see the short- and long-term unfairness of suits that differentially allow competitive advantage."

Bravo! It is the stance that many, many coaches have come to take over the past year. But not all, it seems. There will always be those who need a back to their chair and a prop to lean on.