PARIS, Jan 21, 2009 (AFP) - Cycling chief Pat McQuaid on Wednesday welcomed a Spanish judge’s decision to reopen the Operation Puerto inquiry into blood doping.

Operation Puerto, Spain’s most far-reaching doping investigation, was put on ice last September but a Madrid court ordered it to be restarted this month.

Public prosecutors, the Spanish Sports Council, the Spanish Cycling Federation, the International Cycling Union (UCI) and the World Anti-Doping Agency were amongst those calling for the probe to be re-opened.

UCI president McQuaid believes the judge still has unfinished business to attend to in the scandal which centered on Dr Eufemiano Fuentes, the alleged mastermind of a vast blood doping network.

He remarked: “We hope that this time he (the judge) will see it out right to the end. If there are cyclists involved in this affair we have to have the possibility to punish them.”

McQuaid added that he hoped the investigation would uncover the other sports involved in the affair.

“Fuentes said it himself, 30 percent of his clients were cyclists. Where’s the other 70 percent?”