The news from Lausanne that Michelle de Bruin had received a ban of four years effectively puts the defining matt finish to a controversial career which began with the heartbreakingly lonely predawn pilgrimages to a local swimming pool and ended with a doping panel hearing in a soulless Lausanne hotel.
Between times Michelle de Bruin sampled a wider slice of the swimming world than perhaps any other athlete who ever wore goggles.
She was among the unheralded fodder for the heats in two Olympic celebrations, a determined waif turning up at the doors of some of the world's top coaches, the recipient of a sports scholarship to the University of Houston.
Then a pauline conversion to the techniques and philosophies of Erik de Bruin. And finally under de Bruin's tutelage the extraordinary epiphany of three gold medals at the Olympic Games in Atlanta.
There has never been anyone like her.
Public debate spread like gorsefire after Janet Evans's celebrated press conference during that crazy Olympic week. Soon the Irish swimmer was being given public succour by President Bill Clinton, being welcomed home in the rain by President Mary Robinson.
Domestically, debate was all but extinguished in the chorus of alleluiahs which rent the sagging skies over Ireland.
Two years on, the de Bruin saga is worth trawling through from beginning to end for what it tells us about Irish sport and the easy cynicism of those who retail it (or a version of it) to the Irish public.
Of more immediate importance, however, is the interpretation of the events of the past two weeks.
When Harm Bayer, Ben Belkacen Farid and Bernard Favaro, the lawyers who comprise FINA's doping panel, sat down to sift through the small mountain of defence evidence which de Bruin's lawyer Mr Peter Lennon left on their laps 14 days ago, they had two tangled strands to unravel.
On the micro-level were the confusing forensics of the case. When FINA pointedly stated in yesterday's release that the sample had not been manipulated in the laboratory, had not been manipulated during the transport and had not been manipulated by the collectors, they were not merely hammering decorative nails into the coffin of the de Bruin defence but were restating the core difficulty which any reasonable person would have in exonerating the swimmer.
History. When Michelle de Bruin carried her samples back from the toilet to the kitchen table in Kellsgrange House last January she was witness to the only opportunity there was for tampering or manipulating after the whiskey-scented urine left her body.
Michelle de Bruin had selected the Versapak kit from a selection offered to her, had opened it herself and taken the gathering vessel to the toilet with her.
The sample was given in two tranches which were mixed together and then redivided to form the A and the B samples. The lids were sealed and the samples were inserted into the tamperproof containers used to transport them.
Michelle de Bruin inspected the seals, made sure the codes corresponded, and signed the doping control form to the effect that she was satisfied with the procedure.
If Al and Kay Guy (and it is preposterous to suggest such a thing) ever had any motivation to tamper with an athlete's sample, the chance of succeeding was extremely slim to zero. To have slipped the "potentially lethal" dose of whiskey into a receptacle in full view of Michelle and Erik de Bruin would have been a remarkable act of prestidigitation. It never happened.
Nor could anybody have interfered with the sample after it went into the chain of custody. Could a laboratory worker or courier agency have discovered the codes used, opened both samples, tossed in a Baby Powers and then resealed everything, while also inveigling Al and Kay Guy to rewrite the Mission Report they sent immediately after the test? No.
We know also that when Mr Peter Lennon and a laboratory technician were present in Barcelona for the opening of the `B' sample on May 21st, no signs of tampering or interfering with the seals was evident.
Therein lay the crux. How did the whiskey get into the jar? For it to have been a stitch-up would require a labyrinthine conspiracy which would make the Kennedy assassination look like a mugging. Motive and opportunity all lay with the swimmer.
If Peter Lennon has discovered a method whereby he can prove that the integrity of the seals on testing vessels was breached in this case, then he should proceed immediately to civil litigation, for not only has his client been traduced but the entire apparatus of drug testing in world of sport is faulty.
At present we know only that he felt the proceedings in Lausanne to be fair and cordial and that he was allowed sufficient time to present what were complicated legal arguments. The three lawyers to whom he pitched those arguments have made their decision.
That's the nuts and bolts of the business. They appear to be screwed tight.
The case came to FINA trailing a jetstream of controversies. De Bruin herself had been at the centre of an endless series of near misses, vanishing five years ago when both her national body and the international body demanded to know where she was living.
Her husband, then enduring what now looks like a symmetrically romantic four-year drugs ban, breached doping control at a major swimming championship using somebody else's accreditation.
Three months before that she filled out a control form for FINA which stated that she did not know where she would be training for the Olympics. Within a year of her medals she was being warned for missed dope tests.
Among her defenders yesterday was a man who argued that if FINA could have suspended four Chinese swimmers on the basis of a couple of hours' deliberation in July, well, there must be something highly fishy about taking two weeks to bang up Michelle de Bruin.
It cannot be had both ways. The Chinese had their first hearing in April, incidentally. If Michelle de Bruin's hillock of evidence had been digested, analysed and judged in the space of a couple of hours, the world would be in arms this morning and Bill Gates would be out of business.
The de Bruin case unravelled at a historically significant juncture for world sport. The past few weeks have been unique in terms of the amount of soul-searching and debate which has gone on about the broader ethics and morality of sport.
In their own parish FINA have had a voluble Chinese-American lawyer screaming in their ear about racism every time a Chinese swimmer incurs a ban.
So there could never have been a better time to send a message to the wide world of sport. Swimming, at a crossroads in its own development, has decided to fight back. It was a slow and deliberate decision.
From beginning to end the swimming authorities have acted with glacial certitude. They eschewed the option of an interim ban, they facilitated the defence in every way possible. They considered the evidence at earnest length.
The notion that FINA was out to get Ms de Bruin does not tally with either the facts or all known instincts of sporting bodies.
There is a personal tragedy for the knot of figures at the centre of the story. They have been passionate in their defiance for two or more years now, but the conclusion is unavoidable that much of the outside world will forever look on Michelle de Bruin's achievements as counterfeit.
That personal hollowness must be weighed against the benefits for sport. An Irish swimmer, Donncha Redmond, was among the first to decline an invitation to board the bandwagon back in 1996.
He was effectively silenced but his suggestion yesterday that all Michelle de Bruin's recent records be scrubbed from the IASA's record books is worthy of serious consideration.
What do we tell the lithe, painfully-ambitious, teenage swimmers who ache for recognition and records? That the entire slate of Irish swimming records is held by a woman who came to prominence while trained by a drugbanned athlete and whose career ended with a four-year drugs ban?
For that portfolio of de Bruin records to be held up to youngsters for years to come would be the final grotesque monument to official spinelessness on the matter of drugs in Irish sport.
There is a lead. FINA - a body not celebrated for its backbone - did a brave thing yesterday.
It suspended the highest-profile swimmer in the world. It turned the tables and sent a message to all the other kids who get up before first light and make their way to lapping pools.
The decision was about Michelle de Bruin but it was also about the ethics of sport, the honesty which must underpin it. FINA tore down an icon but gave us the chance to have genuine heroes again.
For every daydreaming kid and hard-working aspirant that is good news. For anybody who believes in sport it was a splendid day.