Clothes maketh the man……and the woman

It’s pretty much a sure thing that Tuesday’s headlines here in France will focus on the garb the country’s first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy will be togged up in when she steps off the Eurostar to be greeted by HRH in London. She’s bound to stun and surprise, and the contrast between ancient and modern – to put it rather unkindly – will be there for everyone to see.

But amazingly just for a day the possible dress sense of the former top model and renowned clotheshorse has been shunted from the front pages by the sartorial statements being made by a rising French star of the sporting world – the swimmer Alain Bernard.

The 24-year-old broke three world records and won two gold medals all in the space of three days at the European swimming championships in Eindhoven, the Netherlands last week.

But while his spectacular performance in the pool was making waves in the French media, the swimming world was getting its knickers in a twist over what he was wearing – an all-in-one, state-of-the-art Speedo swim suit.

Now while some will raise their hands in horror because Speedos are apparently back big time, others will breathe a sigh of relief that they’re not quite the 80s fashion victims they perhaps thought they were. But let’s face it these are not really Speedos as we know and love them.

Instead, according to the company’s own self-fulfilling hype, the new little number boasts “stabilising supports to maintain body position, panels to give a streamlined shape and decrease drag, and a strong, light fabric to reduce muscle oscillation and skin vibration.”

In other words squeeze a high-performance athlete into the all-in-one Speedo LZR Racer, and hey-presto, world records will tumble. And so they have – six times in the space of just a month.

That alone has raised a few eyebrows within the sports governing body FINA, over claims that the suit – which retails for almost €500 – will give some richer nations a competitive edge in this year’s Beijing Olympics – as if they needed it. Some argue that it will further diminish the chances of talent winning through as big bucks and sponsorship push the sport even further away from its amateur beginnings.

But in a sense, even as Bernard admits, that’s already happened. In a television interview shortly after his triumphs, he stressed the importance of how a nationally financed sports programme had allowed him to spend hours each day training in the pool and lifting weights in the gym. And certainly his hulking figures bears witness. At 1.95 metres (6ft 5 inches) and 84kgs (190lbs) he’s a veritable muscle machine with an upper body that would grace any bodybuilding competition

Even though of all people the French swimming federation technical director, Claude Fauquet, has waded into the legitimacy of the swim suit by calling for an ethical debate on whether it should be permitted, FINA has already reviewed its “fairness” and declared that everyone who wants to compete in Beijing wearing it should be allowed to do so. Still the price tag might present some from doing so.

Stunned by the polemic surrounding his choice of swimming cozzy and the impact it might have had on his performance so far this year, Bernard mused as to how fast the LZR Racer would be able to complete a length of the pool without someone inside it.

One bright wag within the sport suggested that should FINA really wish to level the playing field so to speak, perhaps it should insist that all swimmers compete naked. That might well boost television ratings, but that would without doubt cause aerodynamic problems of quite a different sort.

For the moment though Bernard remains the toast of French sport – LZR or not – and is undoubtedly among the favourites to lift an Olympic gold.

He has also shrugged off comments – later withdrawn – by one his beaten opponents that he had clearly been “taking the right vitamins”. Certainly his build is far from “normal” – more approaching the stature of a cartoon superhero in fact, but there again it’s just further evidence of how technological training has become for all high performance athletes.

The debate is basically all good silly stuff in the run-up to the games perhaps, but serious business as companies vie with each other in terms of potential sponsorship deals.

One thing’s for sure. Carla won’t be oozing her shapely figure into a Speedo swimsuit when she daintily descends the train in London tomorrow.

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