Think this is over? Think again. Lance Armstrong may want closure, but the charges of conspiracy involving four others, including his former team manager Johan Bruyneel and his trainer Dr Michele Ferrari, will continue to keep the Texan in the headlines as the evidence is revealed. And then there is the business of all the millions of dollars he won during his years of triumph, and whether anyone will be wanting it back.

The debate over what to do about the seven Tours de France from which Armstrong's name has been unilaterally erased by the US Anti-Doping Agency should be laid to rest immediately. Nobody won those Tours. There can be no winner. Except, now, a sport that can finally get to grips with its own tainted history.

Any attempt to promote the men who finished beneath Armstrong in the years between 1999 and 2005 must be resisted. Who would want to entertain the pretence that such riders as Jan Ullrich, Alex Zulle and Ivan Basso deserve to be awarded a retrospective yellow jersey? There was a measure of sensible sporting realpolitik behind Ullrich's claim, made in the wake of Friday's announcement, that he has always been happy with his second places.

The years of Armstrong's Tour victories constitute a blown-up version of the 1988 Olympic 100m final – "the dirtiest race in history", in the title of Richard Moore's recent book. Best to write those years off. Not to ignore them, of course, but to accept the reality of the EPO era and learn its lessons.

By choosing to drop his defence against the charges so doggedly pieced together by the Usada, who picked up the leads gathered by the US federal investigator Jeff Novitzky, Armstrong finally demolished the last lingering illusions of those for whom, in the words of a friend of mine, admiration of his feat in conquering cancer had exceeded suspicion of the means by which he subsequently achieved his unprecedented run of Tour successes.

A man who once looked capable of mounting a run for his country's highest office will henceforth find himself addressing only a rump – albeit a sizeable one – of those who continue to believe in the myth he erected around himself. As a public figure, the once-great Texan is finished.

On Saturday his long-time associate Bruyneel called it a bad day for cycling. The contrary is true, and great credit for that is due to the journalists David Walsh, Pierre Ballester and Paul Kimmage and to Travis Tygart of the Usada, who confronted Armstrong and refused to be intimidated into halting their investigations, to the soigneuse Emma O'Reilly, who gave damaging early testimony, and to the sometime Armstrong team-mates Frankie Andreu, Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis, who were persuaded to testify against their former leader. Without their efforts and admissions he might still be operating under the protection of an unsullied reputation.

Tantamount (although he will continue to deny it) to an admission of guilt, his decision to decline his day in court may make it harder for the world to learn the full extent of the evidence held by the Usada. It is to be hoped that everything will be revealed, in order to help heal the wound caused by the years when scientific doping ruled the sport.

Belief in his integrity persisted long after the accumulation of circumstantial evidence had reached critical mass, and could be found in some quarters whose authority was hard to question. "I love him," Bradley Wiggins said only two years ago, during the last days of Armstrong's final appearance in the Tour. "I think he's great. He's transformed the sport in so many ways. Every person in cycling has benefited from Lance Armstrong, perhaps not financially but in some sense. I don't think this sport will ever realise what he's brought it or how big he's made it.

"Cycling was in the dark ages before he came along, in many ways. You only have to look at the support along the roads, compared to what it was 20 years ago. The majority of that is because of Lance Armstrong. Obviously he has his enemies and people among the fans who don't like him, but they've all benefited from him and his existence on the Tour."

Wiggins is more entitled than most to his view, but he need not feel that anyone but himself was responsible for inspiring the crowds who flocked to watch his triumphs in France and England this summer. The Armstrong effect was most deeply felt in his homeland. In Europe it seems more likely that the present boom would have happened anyway, and that its momentum has increased despite the doping scandals of the past decade.

Only a naif would imagine that doping has been eradicated from the sport, but the good news is to be found in the statistics indicating a significant reduction in the speeds achieved in recent years. No one climbs the 21 hairpins of the Alpe d'Huez at the speed achieved by Armstrong or Marco Pantani during the EPO years. There are no epic breaks by riders suddenly displaying extraterrestrial powers. The sport may be less consistently dramatic as a result, but that is a price worth paying.

Armstrong's fall will be mourned by many who valued his existence as a worldwide symbol of hope to cancer sufferers and their families and friends. The two books in which he discussed the experience of his diagnosis, treatment and recovery brought light into the lives of those plunged into mortal darkness. The yellow wristband became an outward sign of that hope.

Eventually, however, it became impossible to escape the feeling that Armstrong was exploiting his standing as a fundraiser and hope-bringer to armour himself against the increasingly persistent attacks from those who questioned the validity of the achievements which had created the platform for his life as a public figure. His annexation of the colour yellow – the colour of the Tour leader's jersey – for his Livestrong charity seemed presumptuous: the colour belonged to the Tour, not to him. The teams of Livestrong workers who preceded the race's arrival by stencilling kilometres of road with the charity's logo and inspirational messages turned a traditional gesture of spontaneous enthusiasm into something rather chilling in its premeditation, however noble the cause.

All we can do is remember the time and emotion spent on deeds now devalued, and chalk it up to experience. Leave his name in the record books, maybe asterisked, as a reminder. The past is the past. The future, we must believe, will be better.