Operación Puerto - damp squib

Oh dear.

Cyclingnews.com reports that the investigation into one of the biggest sporting doping scandals in recent years has fizzled out like a damp squib (Operación Puerto: Case Closed | Cyclingnews.com).  Despite there being freezers with bags of easily identifiable blood stored for future use, very few of these cases have ever resulted in action taken against the drug cheats.  To my mind this is a travesty and a failure in justice.  Why should some of these cheats pay the penalty (often resulting career-ending suspension), while others get away scot-free?

Operación Puerto began in May 2006 when the Spanish Civil Guard arrested Madrid doctor Eufemiano Fuentes and Liberty Seguros manager Manolo Saiz, amongst others, after having found massive amounts of doping products and blood doping evidence in an apartment belonging to Fuentes.

The doping ring was said to involve more than 200 athletes, amongst which 34 cyclists were named. Of these, 15 were later acquitted of any wrongdoings, and three admitted their ties to Fuentes.

I have always wondered why cycling bore the brunt of accusations resulting from investigations, perhaps due to the huge money involved in top flight European football and the international tennis circuit?  As Wikipedia's entry on Eufemiano Fuentes says,

In Fuentes' clinic in Madrid, 100 blood bags were found which were suspected to belong to athletes that doped. The scandal that grew from the arrests implicated well-known road racing cyclists and include former Tour de France favorites Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Francisco Mancebo, Michele Scarponi, José Enrique Gutierrez Cataluña, Roberto Heras, Alejandro Valverde, Dario Pieri and large parts of the Comunitat Valenciana and former Liberty Seguros cycling squads. Alberto Contador was also a suspect, but was later cleared of any involvement by the Spanish courts and the UCI. Fuentes continually denied having performed illegal operations and also said that he did not work exclusively with cyclists but had other athletes as clients such as footballers.

 There are a lot of dirty secrets being brushed under the carpet, I think.

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