Lester Cohen/Getty ImagesThe ticking of Sheryl Crow's biological clock was apparently too loud for Lance Armstrong to handle.
The seven-time Tour de France winner has for the first time ever revealed the real reason he and Crow called off their engagement and cut romantic ties in his new biography, Lance: The Making of the World's Greatest Champion.
"She wanted marriage, she wanted children; and not that I didn't want that, but I didn't want that at that time because I had just gotten out of a marriage, I'd just had kids," the 37-year-old said of their 2006 split, per an excerpt of the book.
"Yet we're up against her biological clock—that pressure is what cracked it."
Armstrong, already a father of three with one on the way with girlfriend Anna Hansen (no word on the tenacity of her internal ticking), said that things between him and the 47-year-old singer started to unravel not long after their 2005 engagement and became "kind of a struggle," ultimately ending just two weeks before Crow's 44th birthday.
And while it was not likely to be the kind of birthday surprise Crow was expecting, Armstrong admits that the split, in hindsight, wasn't exactly carried out with the best timing—and not just because Crow underwent surgery for breast cancer just weeks later.
"I felt like I wasn't ready," he said in the book, first excerpted by the New York Post. "I would have been in the future, but not then."
"Because if somebody wants a child—man, that's the greatest gift you can give to a woman—so who are you to stand there and say I don't want one. So we were at different points in our lives.
"We were not compatible on that issue."
Not that Crow needed his compatibility in the end. In 2007, she adopted then two-week-old son Wyatt Steven Crow.
As for Armstrong, he's finally ready for a paternal rerun—Hansen is due next month.
His other major delivery, that of his book to store shelves, is set for June 29.
____
Follow us on Twitter @eonline