Amaury Leveaux, who in Rijeka last December rocketed to three stunning world s/c records in a TYR suit that enhances performance, today wishes that the wild mare that FINA let out of the stable when it gave an approving nod to the LZR last year, could be caught and locked away for good.

In an interview with three of L'Equipe's team of swim reporters, he says that it is "sickening" to have to "watch people wipe seconds off their best times" at French nationals, which end in Montpellier today, and that "FINA accepts such people as Alain (Bernard) ... it's nothing personal ... he was able to swim a semi-final, set a world record in a suit [Arena X-Glide] that has not been approved".

The X-Glide, we note, has nothing in it that the LZR, the TYR and other suits have in them. It does lack some of the "qualities" of the wetsuit-lookalikes such as Jaked, that will be worn in Rome at the world championships this summer by the Italian national team and others if FINA and the independent testing currently in progress at the University of Lausanne do not call a halt to the mayhem.

Leveaux adds: "You have to ask 'where will it all end'. It's a bloody [goddam] mess. French swimming has evolved, has become one of the strongest nations, and yet it is no longer credible." People were donning a Jaked and wiping a second off a sprint time from one race to the next, he noted, adding: "And when you hear people say 'You have to wear the Jaked if you want to beat me', we have gone beyond reality."

He had spoken to Bernard about the suit and the world record and concluded: "I said to myself: well, we don't know if the suit will be approved but we do know that breaking that barrier (47) is feasible." The question remained: how?

Leveaux, out of the solo 100m in Rome, said his own position was far better than that of many others: "Look at Hugues Duboscq, he is qualified for the world championships, he won two medals at the [Olympic] Games and, here, he finishes fifth in the 200m final. Ahead of him: four Jakeds."

There was a time when some swimmers would never have believed it possible for them to have made the team for Rome, Leveaux believed. "In three days we had 30 on the team for Rome ... and all those records ... say no more." 

He did not consider himself a victim because he had the money to go out and buy a Jaked, though he was tied to a suit maker. His suit was not the best around at the moment, but it suited him. The folk (literal translation of what he said is "infidels") at Jaked had approached him a number of times to try to get him to try their suit, he said but he had resisted getting involved in a "poaching game". 

As Leveaux put it: what a bloody mess. Good for him for reflecting the state of his sport. Yet one more of those voices who have been saying such things in private for a while now but feel that the time has come to make their views public and say: enough.

Meanwhile, make way for our 16-year-old hero of the day. Yannick Agnel, coached by Fabrice Pellerin in Nice and a French junior champion, stands tall not only because he is 2m from the soles of his feet to his crown: in Montpellier he showed up at his blocks in briefs, just missed his 200m free best, with a 1:51.02 effort and said: "I've always swum in briefs and I see no reason to change that. I wanted to show that you can do honorable times without a supersonic suit." 

A sign of the times: before he stepped up to his blocks an official asked him if he would be wearing something below his bodysuit. He said he would be wearing nothing under his briefs. After his race, he said that he had no regrets even though he missed his best by about half a second. "I'm staying pure ... a wildcard for the future. There is something important at stake. When I reach a barrier, perhaps it is that that will drive me to find the missing tenths or seconds." In other words, not simply by donning the latest supersuit. 

Bravo! Yannick Agnel. A boy who in speaking to L'Equipe proved himself to be more of a man than those coaches who are still happy to seek plaudits for pupils whose performances relied on a prop and more of a man than those who govern the sport of swimming and who have not yet shown that they have truly understood the crisis nor found the courage of the convictions that they ought to have - let alone come anywhere close to expressing them publicly, as they should have done in order to preserve the special nature of the sport that they are supposed to be guardians of.