One thing seems certain. Before we have a conclusion to the Michelle de Bruin saga, public interest will wane. The opaque functioning of sporting committees, who after years of litigation have wrapped themselves in a ticker-tape armoury of procedures and regulations, makes dull reading when they get to the nitty-gritty. The public appetite dulls quickly.
Yet yesterday was extraordinary because the principals came out into broad daylight for the first time. What distinguished the day was the amount of information which the de Bruin team revealed.
On Tuesday night, it had seemed it was charged with tendering an adulterated substance. But yesterday afternoon, in a solicitor's office on the Dublin quays, it volunteered that a long-term analysis of Michelle de Bruin's testosterone profile was in train, and that there were also charges of taking advantage of a banned procedure and using a banned substance to alter the integrity of samples used in doping control.
On Morning Ireland on RTE radio yesterday morning, solicitor Mr Peter Lennon made the first public mention of banned substances.
"They haven't given us the facts of the alleged adulteration nor have they identified the banned substance which may have been contained in the A sample."
This was an unusual step as the FINA statement on the issue mentioned only adulteration. Despite complaints later in the day from the de Bruin legal team that it was virtually in the dark on details of the charges, it became clear that it had been provided with the laboratory report from the Barcelona chemists who analysed the sample. This is as much as anybody is likely to know at this stage.
Michelle de Bruin has come out fighting but it looks like an uphill battle. The precedent her team will use is more than a decade old and not very encouraging.
In 1987, the Swiss athlete Sandra Gasser flew home from Belgium to her home in Kloten, a day after winning a prestigious mile race at the Brussels Grand Prix. In just a year, she had lowered her personal best time by an astonishing 10 seconds. Tongues were wagging.
On the ground in Switzerland, she was summoned by her federation. The previous day it had been informed that a urine sample she had submitted on September 5th had shown traces of an anabolic steroid.
The analysis of the A sample had been performed in a laboratory in Rome. The second sample, the B sample, was tested there on September 23rd with the president of the Swiss athletics federation in attendance.
Later that month, the athlete was banned for two years and stripped of her victory in Brussels.
Gasser responded vehemently, becoming the first athlete to refuse to go quietly and the first to take a doping case to court. Much of the procedure which Michelle de Bruin underwent in January and afterwards arises out of the Gasser case.
Gasser complained of the number of people in the doping control area and the fact that she had not been allowed to choose the beaker that would hold her urine sample. An arbitration panel ruled that she had consented to all this by signing the doping control form.
It then transpired that the total sample sent to Rome had been only half the required 70 millilitres.
More serious irregularities occurred in the laboratory. A vital report wasn't filled out on the A sample. More crucially, it was the analysis of the B sample which caused uproar. The analyses of the A and B sample were improbably different.
The B sample appeared to contain an enormous amount of the banned steroid while the A sample had revealed only traces. Memorably, two Basle scientists declared that the B sample could be virtually anything, "even dog urine".
As a result, the Rome laboratory lost its licence to perform doping tests. However, Gasser's ban ran its course.
Some 11 years later, the key to Michelle de Bruin's future lies in the glass jar marked B which resides in a locked fridge in the Municipal Institute of Medical Investigation Laboratory in Barcelona. The B sample is the other half of the A sample, stored precisely for this sort of eventuality.
Now, however, the stakes are higher, the margin for error is far smaller and the charges are significantly different. Manipulating a sample can carry a ban of up to life.
The environment has also changed. The landscape has been changed by the Gasser case, the high-profile drugs case involving the British runner Diane Modahl, who was eventually cleared, and the award by a civil court of $29 million compensation to US sprinter Butch Reynolds following an overturned drug ban.
Sporting bodies don't dash in cavalier fashion into confrontations with their leading stars. Michelle de Bruin is left with her future essentially hanging on vindication through a jar lying in a fridge in Barcelona or by proving a convoluted scenario involving tampering by a third party.
The ambivalence of the de Bruins' solicitor, Mr Lennon, on the matter of the B sample seems baffling in this regard.
The de Bruin defence would be that the several different layers protecting the samples taken in Kilkenny were breached by some malicious third party well placed enough to be familiar with the identification codes involved; then opened and tampered with between Kilkenny and Barcelona; then accepted and signed for in the laboratory in Barcelona, whose very existence depends on its reputation.
If all this were to have happened, it is reasonable to suggest that the security tapes on the B sample will either show evidence of tampering or the contents of the B sample will clear de Bruin's name.
An independent analysis of the B sample would be crucial in detecting the precise amount of the substance, believed to be whiskey (spelt with an `e', FINA sources say), which is contained therein. If the tampering has been malicious and by a third party, it would take an extraordinary genius to apply the precise same concentration of the whiskey substance to a B sample of differing overall volume to the A sample.
For this to have occurred under the supervision of an IOC laboratory which is inspected every four months, and which must seek reaccreditation annually, would be an extraordinary development.
The accreditation of laboratories depends on them accepting only samples collected and sealed as per the rules of the IOC.
"We have a period of 21 days within which to make a decision as regards the B sample," said Mr Lennon, "and it is very difficult to advise Michelle as to whether or not she should now proceed with her election of having the B sample analysed by a laboratory who seem to have examined a sample which had a lower mass gravity than it did when it left Ireland.
"That has not been explained by FINA. It seems to us that where a laboratory is suggesting that that difference between the reading which was taken in Michelle's house in Kilkenny and that which they find in the lab in Barcelona is the strongest indicator of manipulation or adulteration of a sample, to say go ahead and test the second sample, on the assumption that presumably its mass and the difference that has been quoted already will also be there as well."
Not to avail of the avenue of examining the B sample would seem an unwise decision at this stage. The contents of that jar are going to be called into play at some stage in what will be a long battle.
The de Bruins raised questions yesterday about the time lapse between the test being administered in January and the couple being informed of the outcome yesterday.
With a high-profile case like de Bruin's, and given the complexity of the issues involved, it is conceivable that such a delay is reasonable. One presumes that the FINA doping commission checked and rechecked its legal, medical and scientific position on the issue.
For the governing body of such a troubled sport to ask questions of its triple Olympic champion is a big step. It would be more alarming if the time lapse had been shorter, suggesting hastiness.
The issues of the specific gravity of the sample having diminished between the time it was measured in Kilkenny and measured in Barcelona is beyond the remit of the layman. The measure is taken basically as a measure of the density of the sample. That this might have changed due to the introduction of the substance believed to be whiskey is a question for scientists and, perhaps ultimately, the courts.
For now, though, the tactic for the defence is to push against the wall of FINA officialdom, looking for a weak spot. Complete vindication is possible for Michelle de Bruin if an extraordinary sequence of events can be proved. Unfortunately, the burden of proof lies with the swimmer. Until a determination is made on the B sample, FINA is likely to let matters lie.
"There are, of course, many rumours," said Mr Gunnar Werner, the honorary secretary of FINA last night, "but we have a procedure to follow and would wish to avoid speculation . . . We will say nothing more explicit than that at this time."
So the machinery of sporting regulation rolls on and, regardless of the ultimate outcome, it has taken a large chunk of Ireland's sporting innocence with it. In that alone, there is much to be sad about.