The curtain closed on the world short-course championships here in Manchester tonight with a fanfare that celebrated 18 world records, 85 continental records and more national records than you would care to count. The MEN Arena has staged a fabulous showcase of short-course swimming, one that the city and Britain can be proud of. The black backdrop, the light show, the gladiatorial walk on to races (which needs a tweak if it is to be adopted beyond the little pool), the music and the supportive crowd that grew to pleasing proportions at the weekend after three days of famine, all contributed to a fine FINA affair.

But we're swimming in extraordinary days of a different kind too, days in which officialdom, many a coach and many a swimmer would like us all to focus on and celebrate human achievement and the phenomenal performances of the athletes who have thrilled us at every start, turn and stroke for the past five sensational days. The message is clear: don't mention the suit.

I love my swimming. I know what I'm watching too. And what I've watched this week is the biggest aquatic laboratory experiment in the history of suit technology. I don't say that in a negative sense. But I say it because there are, unbelievably, many who wandered out into the cold, damp air of Manchester tonight still believing that the LZR suit's impact on the sport is unquantifiable. Orwell's Big Brother would have been proud of them.

Science and technology. No harm in it. Great assets can accrue from it. But know what you have on your skin - and acknowledge it. If I hear one more person ask me where they might look for scientific proof of any gain to be had from a suit whose makers claim their product enhances performance (as if it were just marketing hype) I will feel duty bound to scream back at them: 'it's in the water stupid'.

I took 450 performances of swimmers wearing the LZR Racer, including world record setters down to people finishing in the top 20 of their event. More than 400 of them were clustered in an approximate range from 1.6% to 2.3%. I called a professor and friend who spends his life looking at probabilities. I put the small test results to him. Statistically significant? "e;Without a shadow of a doubt ... if you have that kind of result in a medical experiment, you'd be looking at 'case proven'."e; I looked at the gains made by others, such as Russians, in the R-Evolution. Solid improvements, no question - but nothing even close to the evidence flowing from the LZR-clad shoal. There are only so many hours in a day, so I will avoid taking 450 performances from Indianapolis 2004, or Shanghai 2006, say, or Barcelona 2003, or Perth 1991, or Perth 1998, to see whether I could find a cluster of improvement around the 2% mark. I think I know the answer: there wasn't one.

So why pretend any longer? The new generation of suits - and I say suits because it is now a question of when, not if, Speedo rivals pull the polyurethane out of the bag - aid performance. The sport had a chance, a slim chink of light though it was, to consider the issues. It chose not too. The decision is made: there will be no return to briefs and human skin. The technological age is upon us and the suit makers that have a vested interest in diving deeper into the world of fast 'fabrics' that aren't fabrics at all in the traditional sense that most people would understand have been given the pen with which to write the new rules of the game.

The process needs an independent eye. FINA and the suit makers are working on it. They also need to look at the ethical aspects of the new age of swimming that have so far been ignored or overlooked. Junior swimming? All happy to have a big junior in the suit that a smaller swimmer cannot wear? Happy to make swimming a sport for those who can afford it? Not quite n line with the all-inclusive nature of a many-nationed federation. There are swimmers in these senior waters here in Manchester who have been told that they cannot have an LZR because their torso to leg ratio is out of range. Solutions need to be found to ensure a level playing field as much as level playing fields are possible to find. Certainly the gulf between the haves and have nots over the past month has caused schism in the sport. Unhealthy.

With the passing of these championships, there are those who will feel that the dark cloud hanging over the suit issue has passed. That may be so but where one short moment sinks below the horizon another rises to take its place. The suit debate has not yet run its course. For the sport's sake, the complex process of resolution needs to be as speedy as the swimmer in the suit.

Meanwhile, the meet in Manchester, thrilling as it was, tells us nothing about Beijing. A USA C team ( again, no offense intended, quite the opposite) leads the medals table, with an Australia B to C team (again, no offense intended), with Felicity Galvez at the helm with two world records but not even heading to Beijing, second. Then come four women from Holland and then comes Kirsty Coventry on her own, before we get to the host nation, celebrating more medals than any other nation, 24. As Chris Nesbit, head coach to GBR in Manchester, put it: there's only one thing short and long-course have in common: 'water'. Nesbit has done a fine job as head coach at The Southport School out on the Gold Coast. The value of the programme out in Australia at Britain's offshore centre cannot be overstated. British Swimming is conducting a review. Endorsement of the TSS project should be a foregone conclusion. We await evidence of wisdom.

Here's the top of the medals table from Manchester: