It’s official: Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and has been banned for life — even though he’s retired. UCI, the international cycling union, will not challenge the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s punishment, and the event will have no official champion from 1999-2005.

Says UCI president Pat McQuaid, long derided as an Armstrong apologist:

“Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling. . . He deserves to be forgotten.”

So there.

During his announcement today McQuaid also quoted John F. Kennedy, yedy, yedy, yedy.

Now cycling’s long dirty nightmare is over, and the cleansing and healing can begin. Right?

So this is the end of it then? Right?

Think again.

USADA boss Travis Tygart wants more, plenty more:

“For cycling to truly move forward and for the world to know what went on in cycling, it is essential that an independent and meaningful Truth and Reconciliation Commission be established so that the sport can fully unshackle itself from the past. There are many more details of doping that are hidden, many more doping doctors, and corrupt team directors and the omerta has not yet been fully broken.”

Tygart’s proxies in the media aren’t entirely ready to claim victory either. David Walsh of The Sunday Times, who’s been on the rampage against Armstrong for more than a decade, just Tweeted:

“This is a good day for clean cycling and it would get better if Hein Verbruggan and Pat McQuaid took the honourable course and resigned.”

(Point of information: Verbruggen is McQuaid’s predecessor at UCI.)

Bonnie D. Ford of ESPN.com, also on Twitter:

“Looks like UCI missed an opportunity to graciously admit it could have done better. #understatement”

What do these people want? Vengeance clearly isn’t enough. Nor is the rapid loss of sponsors, including Armstrong’s last corporate endorsement, from Oakley, which severed all ties on Monday.

There’s little left to take away from Armstrong, so the moorings of his “drug ring,” namely the institutions that allowed him to operate for years, must be dismantled, preferably with the absolutist tactics of USADA and all of those who claim Armstrong’s alleged deeds to have been nothing short of evil.

The old saw about destroying the sport in order to save it could be inserted here, for the tack advocated by Tygart would surely result in complete destruction. That’s clearly what he thinks needs to happen to make the sport open to “clean riders.” But the unaccountable zeal of this individual is what needs to be scrutinized as much as “dirty” athletes.

Since when did it become Tygart’s place to recommend how individual sports “unshackle” themselves from their past? His agency is responsible only for investigating American athletes for doping in certain Olympic sports, and nothing more.

USADA’s power to strip Armstrong of trophies won on foreign soil, including several titles won before that agency even existed, has rarely been called into question. That’s because so much “establishment” media has been reveling in schadenfreude since Armstrong decided not to appeal the USADA’s decision through its stacked arbitration process.

I’m more troubled by Tygart and USADA going forward than anything Armstrong might have done in the past. Because what happens from here is clearly emboldened by the events of the past month. In so many ways, the case against Armstrong hasn’t really been about Armstrong at all.

It’s been about making him an example for what the War on Steroids is all about — an extension of our fabulously wasteful, destructive War on Drugs.

The USADA, which gets most of its funding from the U.S. Office of Drug Control Policy, has a remarkable streak against athletes who dare to challenge it. In the 30-some-odd USADA cases that have been been appealed, only one has been won by an athlete in the arbitration process.

Yet despite the earnest efforts of a Valparaiso University law professor and his students working for free to defend her, sprinter LaTasha Jenkins’ career was destroyed before it ever really began. This makes for even more tragic and harrowing reading in light of the hysteria against Armstrong.

Where was the indignation from Walsh, Ford, et al, over what happened to Jenkins?

You don’t have to do much of a Google search to discover that they couldn’t be bothered. The compulsion to get to the “truth” about Armstrong has trumped all other considerations, even chronicling how the USADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Court of Arbitration for Sport operate: Largely without due process and with little to no transparency.

I realize mine is a distinctly minority view. But whatever you think of Armstrong, I fear that the self-serving, self-righteousness of people like Travis Tygart and other anti-doping zealots is becoming a greater threat to fair play in sports than any athlete injecting himself with EPO ever has been.

Bravo — no, bravissimo — to Elliott Turner for his excoriation of the sports governing bodies involved in disciplinary proceedings against Lance Armstrong (doping) and Chelsea soccer star John Terry (racial taunting of another player).

Turner’s withering discourse on The Classical gets to the heart of the problem of the “kangaroo courts” of sports. Bodies like the English Football Association and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which are not bound by a high bar of legal proof, enjoy greater power against athletes, even those who have official charges against them dropped, as in the cases of Terry and Armstrong, or are otherwise exonerated.

Indeed, Turner argues, the worst part of this is the seeming inevitability that should the government fall short, sports entities will really bring down the hammer, heavier than a court of law ever could:

“Instead of creating a separate sphere of sport and law, this looks like a second bite at the apple. If the police mess up an investigation or a prosecutor blows a trial, then de facto double jeopardy awaits the accused athlete. He may not face a year in jail, but instead risks losing seven Tour de France titles, a lifetime of achievement, and his good name.”

This is a line of argument that, as I blogged about recently, rarely makes its way into the mainstream sports media. Especially sanctimonious is the cadre of American columnists who rail eternally against “cheating,” as if that were an offense worse than the suspension of due process for accused athletes.

Earlier this month a blog post on the Columbia Journalism Review website was devoted to how journalists covering the Armstrong case are better-versed in the scientific details of doping, and how they’re informing readers as a result.

Declan Fahy pointed out the difficulties faced by reporters as well as drug-testers in detecting banned substances. But he completely ignored the monopoly status agencies like USADA and WADA enjoy, and that are even becoming quasi-legal in the current climate of fanatical punishment, actual guilt or innocence be damned.

Fahy made only passing references to media discussions about the ethics of doping, and whether taking steroids should be banned at all. Then he plugged cyclist and former Armstrong confidant Tyler Hamilton’s new tell-all book, “The Secret Race,” as “a first-hand account of how systematic doping is conducted.”

Perhaps in a future post Fahy can examine the need for reporters to exhibit not just “scientific muscle” but also equal discernment of the extra-legal process that “convicts” athletes where courts of law do not. And what are the ethics of that?

Turner’s piece would serve as a very good example of some badly needed journalistic scrutiny of the anti-doping zealots. Because they’re getting more of a free ride than the “cheaters” ever did.