A teary-eyed Lance Armstrong finally showed some emotion last night while confessing to Oprah Winfrey that he was guilted into telling his children he was pro cycling’s biggest cheater.
Armstong said he had little choice but to ’fess up over the holidays when he learned that his oldest son, Luke, 13, was regularly defending him in public.
“He never asked me; he never said, ‘Dad is this true?’ ” Armstrong said. “He trusted me.”
Regarding his talk with Luke and Lance’s two 11-year-old twin girls, Armstrong recounted saying, “Listen, there’s been a lot of questions about your dad. I said, ‘I want you to know it’s true.’
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DADDY’S DISGRACE: Lance Armstrong lost his composure when he told Oprah Winfrey how he confessed his sordid lies to his children.
“I told them, ‘Don’t defend me anymore’ . . . They didn’t say much . . . They just accepted it,” added Armstrong, who also has two younger children.
During the second half of the long-awaited confession, he also admitted that his most “humbling” moment during his fall from grace was in November when he was pressured into cutting all ties with Livestrong, the cancer charity he helped found.
“The foundation was like my sixth child,” he said, adding that that experience was even more humiliating than losing tens of millions of dollars in sponsorship deals from companies such as Nike.
He later said with a straight face that he believes he deserves to compete professionally again.
“I deserved to punished. I don’t deserve the death penalty,” he said, referring to his lifetime ban.
Armstrong’s remarks aired hours after some people he had burned on his way to the top said he fell flat during the first part of his on-air mea culpa with Winfrey, which aired Thursday.
The wife of a former teammate who long said that Armstrong was a doper ripped the admitted drug user after his limited confession.
Betsy Andreu testified in 2006 that she heard Armstrong admit to doping in an Indiana hospital 10 years prior. After years of denying her charges and attacking her, Armstrong refused to address those claims.
“I’m really disappointed,” Andreu told CNN. “You owed it to me, Lance, and you dropped the ball.”
Max Miley, 52, who rode with Armstrong as teenagers in Texas, told The Post he thought the fallen star was “evasive” at times.
“He’s been lying for 15 years and it’s hard to believe that [he’s] telling the truth now,” Miley said.
Miley, a cycling coach and founder of Max Fitness Inc., did not believe Armstrong was completely forthcoming.
“The fact that he said he took drugs every Tour de France [he won] . . . to hear it from his mouth is a big admission on his part.”
But Armstrong needs to unload everything, Miley said. “It can’t hurt to change things, but he cannot move forward unless he truly comes clean,” he said.
Sports officials agreed.
A day after stripping Armstrong of his bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the International Olympic Committee said Armstrong should give authorities details about his doping program to “bring an end to this dark episode.
“If he thinks this interview would help him get credibility back, I think this is too little, too late,” said IOC Vice President Thomas Bach, who heads the committee’s anti-doping investigations.
In Thursday’s installment on Oprah’s network, Armstrong said he didn’t feel he was cheating while using steroids to win seven consecutive Tour de France races, and didn’t supply any names of those who helped him.
Armstrong’s rep did not respond to a request for comment.
dmacleod@nypost.com
