In fairness to Valverde, though, he is one of the few that can argue water under the bridge regards Puerto; we know he was involved, whether he pretends he was innocent or not we know that, and like only a few others, he's paid the price. Little new can be gleaned from Valverde as far as Operación Puerto is concerned; he isn't going to volunteer anything he doesn't have to, that much is clear, and what are people expecting, that he's going to be sanctioned? Unlike most of the others in Puerto, Valverde, like Scarponi and Basso, actually has been suspended, so apart from stripping a few of his pre-2006 results (and in that instance, which ones? We know that these cases can involve some selectivity, just look at Menchov being stripped of 65th in the Tour but not 1st in the Giro for example) what can they do to him without falling foul of double jeopardy?
The big thing for it is, hardly anybody can pay at this point in time. Valverde is just about the last person from the investigation left of any relevance. I know Mancebo and Sevilla are still active but they've been personae non grata at the top level for a decade and have in reality suffered far more for their involvement than the guys that got bans. They're also 40+ and only competing in distant, less high profile scenes whereas obviously Ally Vally is about as prominent as a rider can get, wearing the rainbow jersey in his sunset like Joop Zoetemelk or something. What are we going to gain from a few post-dated suspensions for the likes of Allan Davis, António Colóm and co.? It's meandered for so long and so many of the actants from a cycling point of view are already well known about, that it's almost faded from relevance at this stage; the known Puerto riders' careers will always have that slight cloud to them. And while there may be something at stake for those who have some of the unknown bags, or knowing definitively who some of the "probably that person but not certainly" bags are, Alejandro Valverde is not one of those people. He's been DNA-matched to a bag, he's been linked definitively to Puerto and he is forever indelibly tainted by it already. Therefore he likely has nothing to fear from this investigation other than repetitious questions he doesn't want to answer and will likely continue to evade in the same manner as always given that he's already told us all he's ever likely to be willing to tell us on the subject.
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