Apologies, but this just seems like a really naïve take. If they take away the results of riders who voluntarily admit, it takes away any incentive toward honesty. And again - at the time we had a few dopers whose confessions and cooperation had been very helpful towards combating doping. Admittedly, these were largely riders who had either called time on their careers or who had been ostracised, but nevertheless, surely it is plain to see why the sport may want to show a greater degree of leniency than towards the guy who had destroyed peoples' lives, smeared people's names, ruined peoples' careers and bullied others into silence to protect his own doping. If they give Armstrong a sweetheart deal and let him keep all his titles, he gets no punishment, then they incentivise that behaviour.
Your comments on not being familiar with the doping or alleged doping of a number of the riders I brought up from the immediate post-Armstrong era suggests that you may have come to the sport later than that era - and that's no problem at all, but the outcome you have outlined, of essentially protecting Armstrong's results in the name of being able to compare potential future feats, would simply not have been possible with the Reasoned Decision coming in the environment of 2012, and if I'm right and you've come to the sport later than that, then you may simply not understand the anti-doping environment as it was back then.
Today, it's been a long time since we had a huge blow-the-lid-off scandal, but back then there were plenty. Enough that, for example, German TV had basically thrown the Tour off major stations due to continual scandals, and wildcard teams could put together a pretty strong roster built largely out of riders competing under the informal "quarantine" of two years where a returning doper would not be signed by any ProTour (WT precursor) teams. There was a very conscious attempt to clean the sport up in the post-Armstrong era in order to restore its reputation, with a number of major operations affecting numerous teams and riders, and his return was a significant factor in that progress stalling, and this was very fresh in the memories of many at the time. There wasn't a "no news is good news" environment at the time, the sport was having to catch the most egregious cheats like Riccò and Schumacher because they weren't subtle enough and with the constant scandals rocking the sport, superhuman feats were not greeted with awe and admiration but with scepticism and derision. Armstrong's actions had done such damage for so long that they absolutely had to set an example of him.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram