‘I want to compete again’

Chicago, Jan. 18 Lance Armstrong said he finally cracked after he saw his son defending him against allegations from anti-doping authorities.

Not while expressing deep remorse or regrets, though there was plenty of that in Friday night’s second part of Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Armstrong didn’t break over the $75 million in lost sponsorship deals, or after being forced to walk away from the Livestrong cancer charity he founded and called his “sixth child.” He didn’t crack after his lifetime ban from competition.

“I saw my son defending me and saying, ‘That’s not true. What you’re saying about my dad is not true,’” Armstrong recalled.

“That’s when I knew I had to tell him.”

Armstrong was near tears at that point, referring to 13-year-old Luke, the oldest of his five children. He blinked, looked away from Winfrey, and with his lip trembling, struggled to compose himself.

It came just past the midpoint of the hourlong program on Winfrey’s OWN network. In the first part, broadcast on Thursday, the disgraced cycling champion admitted using performance-enhancing drugs when he won seven straight Tour de France titles.

Critics said he hadn’t been contrite enough in the first half of the interview, which was taped Monday in Austin, but Armstrong seemed to lose his composure when Winfrey zeroed in on the emotional drama involv-

If you’re asking me, do I want to compete again ... the answer is hell, yes. I’m a competitor. It’s what I’ve done my whole life. I love to train. I love to race

ing his personal life.

“What did you say?” Winfrey asked.

“I said, ‘Listen, there’s been a lot of questions about your dad. My career. Whether I doped or did not dope. I’ve always denied that and I’ve always been ruthless and defiant about that. You guys have seen that. That’s probably why you trusted me on it.’ Which makes it even sicker,” Armstrong said.

“And uh, I told Luke, I said,” and here Armstrong paused for a long time to collect himself, “I said, ‘Don’t defend me anymore. Don’t.’

“He said OK. He just said, ‘Look, I love you. You’re my dad. This won’t change that.”

Winfrey asked Armstrong about a “60 Minutes Sports” interview in which USADA chief executive Travis Tygart said a representative of the cyclist had offered a donation that the agency turned down.

“Were you trying to pay off USADA?” she asked.

“No, that’s not true,” he replied, repeating, “That is not true.”

Winfrey asks the question three more times, in different forms. “That is not true,” he insisted.

After retiring from cycling in 2011, Armstrong returned to triathlons, where he began his professional career as a teenager, and he has told people he’s desperate to get back.

Winfrey asked if that was why he agreed to the interview. “If you’re asking me, do I want to compete again ... the answer is hell, yes,” Armstrong said. “I’m a competitor. It’s what I’ve done my whole life. I love to train. I love to race. I love to toe the line — and I don’t expect it to happen.”

— AP