The Rome 2009 world championships will be a tale of two call rooms: the first will be a suit-checking room, the second the ready room before the race, and the process will add around 20mins to the pre-race routine of swimmers.

Cornel Marculescu, executive director of FINA, explained at a press conference here in Lausanne today that three days or so out from competittion in Rome, all swimmers and teams will be required to hand in all suits that they intend to wear. Those suits will be tested by Prof Jan-Anders Manson and team from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, tagged with a bar-code system and returned to the swimmer. In the first call room, suit checks would take place using apparatus not unlike a supermarket checkout gun. The process will allow for any swimmer deemed to have donned the "wrong" suit to switch into another tagged suit.

The checking equipment is already used in skiing, both before and after races. In Rome, only pre-race checks will apply. FINA will place faith in athletes, coaches and teams not to apply creams and sprays that can affect buoyancy but would remain "vigilant" in the face of a threat that Marculescu acknowledged to be real.

It was to be expected, said the director, that some would try to cheat. "The human brain never stops ... we had a  big doping problem. We imposed controls ... but some will still cheat you."

Meanwhile, early indications for Rome are that that 1,600 swimmers may enter, compared to a record entry of just over 1,000 in Melbourne. The true number in Rome may be closer to 1,300 come the moment in July, but to avoid long drawn-out heats in the morning, organisers will use all 10 lanes at the Foro Italico.  

In finals, swimmers will be presented to the crowd as they were at the Manchester 2008 world s/c championships: one by one, lane by lane, outside lanes in, with lane four emerging from a curtain in gladiatorial style, last but not least. More time would be allowed for the occupant of lane four to prepare to race, after complaints in Manchester than the fastest entry to the final, as last man out from the ready room, had been rushed to the blocks.