Alpe d'Huez said:
It does seem rather unjust that after they "finally" caught Valverde, the entire Puerto case was "finally' over. Even though dozens of other riders and who knows how many other athletes, went untouched. None the less, two wrongs don't make a right. He doped, was caught, and was finally suspended.
I tend to agree with the others. He seemed to show no contrition, and lied every step of the way. He didn't even come up with any sort of realistic explanation/excuses that could have helped his cause. His main arguments were that it wasn't fair, and he didn't dope (despite hard evidence to the contrary). It's like he's from the Lance Armstrong school of arguing.
I still feel now, as I did a few years ago, that it would have benefited him to find a way to cooperate with REFC by giving information to help combat doping, and give a humbling apology. He may have gotten some sort of reduced suspension that held up to CAS. Now, there's no way he's coming back until his suspension is over. And the sad part is, once he's back, I'm sure he'll go fully back to upholding the
omerta as he always has in the past.
If the Spanish authorities had handled it as they should have, Valverde and
all the others would have been dealt their punishments as the rules require. However, because of rampant corruption and nationalism this didn't take place.
The real injustice, if any is to be found in this case, is that it took a third party, namely Italy, to do the job which Spain had blatantly neglected. Valverde's entire defense rested upon the ambiguity of whether or not Torri and the Italian prosecutors had any legal purchase to do so. TAS said, yes, they did, at which point the Spaniard should have provided his full confession, but has continued with his pathetic denials because evidently he realizes that there is enough moral support in his home country to justify what to most everyone else appears unjustifiable. It makes me wonder if this had been a British case, or say a German or Austrian case, how those states and publics would have responded to the situation. In Italy we are used to having a level of tolerance toward corruption and unethical behavior among the political class, as the Berlusconi regime painfully attests, that would be unheard of in an Anglo-Saxon environment, because the level of civility there is higher. Yet Valverde's refusal to accept reality while maintaining his feeble and spurious defense, in light of the irrefutable evidence against him, is simply repulsive. Less for moralistic reasoning, as we have gone so far beyond that, but as an affront to human intelligence.
And it was so revealing what Fuente's said to his cell mate during his second arrest: that is, "if I go down, then what I have to say will make the soccer European and World championships go up in smoke in this country." This becomes tantamount to an admittance by the Spanish medic of systematic blood doping among the soccer block as well. It also affirms the suspicion we have always had regarding OP, namely that it was "permitted" to target the weak and less lucrative sport of cycling, so long as none of the Spanish riders were implicated and brought to justice (in fact the few that were, till now, were all foreigners and by
their respective national sport bodies requesting information from Spain that it was willing to release abroad but not at home, until the Valv-Piti bloodsacks were finally conceded to Italy by Italian request). This, to try and save face, while simultaneously "protecting" the much more money churning sport of soccer that would thus seem to be untouchable; in what can only be regarded as a massive internal cover-up at the expense of a few foreigners.
So this becomes another case for injustice in the OP affair, though not of the type Valverde bemoans. It rather concerns the omerta' and a mafia like comportment of the Spanish state in order to suppress any efforts to bring down widespread doping practices among its soccer teams and players, as well as other sports which have given it immortal fame over the last decade like tennis, while sacrificing a few foreign riders who became the scapegoats. All of which is appalling, of course, and the only consolation has been from a few objective and intellectually honest Spanish journalists in dailies like El Pais; who have been just as scandalized as those looking in from the outside by the deplorable comportment of the Spanish sporting establishment and state in not seeing doping dealt with more seriously among its athletes like in Germany, Italy, France, Austria, etc.
There is no more charge to be added to the bill of indictment. Although it must be said that no soccer nation is doing their duty to cast doping within the sport under the light of justice and public scrutiny. However OP has undoubtedly been a lost opportunity that should have acted as a real catalist in seeing some positive gains in mounting an effective offensive to dismantal the regime of corruption and illicit practice that governs this quite powerful, as well most, professional sports.
PS. For those who would contest that there wasn't at the time a common law making doping a penal offense in Spain, as in other states, thus legally the evidence from OP could not have been released, etc. Well then the Spanish authorities, especially in light of blood sacks that were conceded by them to other countries, should have, had there been the political will to do so, promptly enacted a law and even made it retroactive so that those guilty could have been processed and brought to justice. But evidently it wasn't patriotically (nor economically) expedient to have done so immediately, which makes Spain's comportment all the more ghastly and Valverde's obstinacy that much more dysfunctional.
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