A long story comes to a significant fork in the road this afternoon in Lausanne. A three-man committee composed entirely of lawyers will meet in a large, airy room on Avenue Beaumont to consider the case of Michelle de Bruin, Ireland's triple Olympic swimming champion, who is accused of manipulating a urine sample provided for drug testers.
If found guilty of the charge, Ms de Bruin could face a lengthy suspension. A life ban is one of the options open to FINA, the sports governing body, when considering such cases. Ms de Bruin vehemently denies the charges and has repeatedly said she will challenge any ban to the International Olympic Committee's Court of Arbitration.
It has been learned by The Irish Times that part of the case against her will be a supplementary report by doping control officers which they submitted immediately after they took urine samples from her on January 10th last.
It is believed that the report documents all events and alleged irregularities associated with the test.
The report is entirely separate from the doping control form which Ms de Bruin was invited to verify and sign at the end of the test having inspected the relevant code numbers and seals.
The three lawyers who will examine the case, a German, an American and an Algerian, will hear submissions from the de Bruin delegation and will ask questions.
It is expected that they will reach a decision sometime in the late afternoon. It was not entirely clear last night if the swimmer will attend the hearing but sources in both Dublin and Lausanne considered it more than likely that she will be present with her solicitor, Mr Peter Lennon.
The hearing, which is closed to the public and the media, will be directed by the chairman of FINA's doping commission Mr Harm Bayer, a magistrate from Hamburg. Assisting him will be Mr Ben Belkacen Farid, a lawyer from Algeria, and Mr Bernard Favaro, also a lawyer, from Vallejo, California.
The case against Ms de Bruin dates from January 10th when two testers from the Swedish testing agency, International Doping Tests and Management, arrived at the Co Kildare home she shares with her husband, Eric, to take an out-of-competition drugs test. The rest is a story of phials, test tubes and, it is alleged, whiskey.
The affair spilled over into the public domain at the end of April when Ms de Bruin summoned reporters to her solicitor's offices in Dublin and stated that she was being charged on three counts. In fact just one charge has been brought, that of "using a substance and method which altered the validity and integrity of a urine sample in doping control".
Her sample was rechecked in Barcelona on May 21st, with the swimmer's solicitor and a Dublin laboratory technician present. That test confirmed earlier findings and set the stage for today's events.