Reaction to Michelle de Bruin's press conference in Dublin yesterday reflected the complexities of one of the most emotive issues in Irish sport in years.
FINA, and the majority of those journalists who have pursued the subject with uncommon zeal, may have found the Irish swimmer guilty of tampering with a urine specimen, given at her home in Co Kilkenny, last January.
That verdict would not appear to be endorsed, however, by a significant section of the Irish public after the triple Olympic champion, composed and articulate as ever, had presented her side of the case in her second major press conference in four months.
Far from being cowed by the intensity of the campaign to have her banned, she sifted the evidence against her, point by point, as a prelude to the submission of an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne within the next few weeks.
Saying that she had always represented her country with dignity, she denied that she had cheated or lied, and stressed that as the most drug-tested athlete of recent times she had never been proved guilty of taking a banned substance. That point carries the ring of conviction, even if the great majority of the public fail to comprehend the jargon which, sadly, is now recurring at ever more regular intervals in international sport.
Knocking national and international bodies is one of the easiest and most convenient practices in sport. FINA, an organisation not exactly renowned for the precision of its operations, has come in for some tough, and at times justifiable, criticism in this matter.
There was, for example, the leaking of the original story to an English newspaper before the official announcement that the urine sample had been tampered with. Ever since, fair-minded people have wondered why.
Whatever the motivation, the effect has been to present the swimmer with an arduous task to clear her name. And some of the latest allegations made by the de Bruins, if substantiated, are likely to bring the organisation into further disrepute.
There is, too, the influence of the international media in the case. In yesterday's edition of The Irish Times Philip Whitten, editor-inchief of Swimming World, discounted the suggestion that the American press had been uncommonly hostile to the Irish swimmer. That is not a view shared by many Irish people.
And despite Whitten's assertion to the contrary, it has to be set against the eclipse of Janet Evans, an American swimming idol in the 400 metres freestyle championship.
Evans's inability to make the A final, when a chauvinistic American publicity machine was preparing the nation at large for heroics, was a major affront to national pride.
In my experience of covering every Olympic Games since 1972 for this newspaper, that was a conference without precedent in terms of vitriol.
It mattered little to the questioners that de Bruin had won the title in a time which was almost four seconds slower than Evans's winning figures at Seoul in 1988, or that she had claimed two European titles on her way to Atlanta.
American journalists, deflated by Evans's dismal performance and determined to explain it, in part, by pointing the finger at de Bruin's emergence at the top of the international rankings at the age of 26, were simply not in the mood to listen to the counter-argument that success had been attained in a series of measured progressions.
History shows that, on occasions, athletes have stood logic on its head and achieved success at Olympian level at times when they appeared to have slipped past their peak. American commentators, in particular, have reason to remember this.
At a time when sport is being devalued almost daily by cheats, it is right that people found guilty should experience the full rigour of the law.
And if Michelle de Bruin fails in her appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, it is equally valid that investigations should be extended to cover her earlier career.
Yet there is a substantial volume of opinion in this country and elsewhere that the success story which has captivated the sporting world in recent years was built on more than the ingenuity of a chemist.
In particular people are troubled - and rightly so - by the unusual coverage which has been given to this particular case and the suspicion that de Bruin was perceived as an easy target.
With no support, financial or otherwise, available from the Irish Amateur Swimming association, de Bruin and her husband and coach, Erik, are left to fund from their own resources the fight to clear her name.
In the end that may prove no more than a waste of time and money. But until the appeals procedure is exhausted, it is unwise to rush to judgment.