“It’s traumatic to be out late with your friends in a foreign country – with a language barrier – and have a stranger point a gun at you and demand money to let you leave”, Lochte said on Instagram.
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Lochte released a statement saying, “I want to apologize for my behavior last weekend – for not being more careful and candid in how I described the events”.
This is Lochte’s first major gaffe, and whatever sanctions the national governing body passes down could have little effect on the professional swimmer.
Rio is plagued by violent crime and Brazil has deployed 85,000 police and soldiers to secure the Olympics. In the Phelps case, the board announced a week after the arrest that it was suspending the sport’s biggest star for six months, banning him from competing in the 2015 world championships and taking away six months of his funding stipend.
Lochte returned to the United States on Monday, a day after the incident and before police denounced his version.
Bentz and Conger arrived in Miami on Friday aboard an American Airlines flight from Brazil, having sat in curtained-off seats for much of the journey.
But he added: “My only feelings towards them (the swimmers) are pity and contempt”. “It is not representative of what is expected as Olympians, as Americans, as swimmers and as individuals”. Brazil and Rio have staged a great Games, and it was a privilege to be there and to represent the United States of America. Some believe he will likely lose sponsors.
Developments came rapidly after police asserted that the swimmers had not been robbed.
Prosecutors quickly appealed the penalty as being too low, persuading the judge to suspend the earlier ruling that had given Feigen the green light to leave.
Bentz and Conger said they were not robbed in revised testimony given to police hours before their departure, senior Rio police officer Alexandre Braga told Reuters.
The four US swimmers had faced charges of filing false complaints to police after fabricating a story that they had been the victims of an armed robbery, following a night of partying, by men posing as police. O Globo reported that he is being ordered to donate $11,000 to a local sports charity to drop the charges against him and leave the country. An encounter with the Brazilian criminal justice system.
Lochte originally claimed that he and his fellow swimming teammates Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger, and Jimmy Feigen, were held at gunpoint after a party they attended last Sunday in Rio.
The footage doesn’t show a weapon, but a police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing, said two guards pointed guns at the swimmers.
Veteran swimmer Ryan Lochte’s brush with Rio police has already hurt his appeal to sponsors – but for two lesser-known team mates, it means they may never get a chance to sign their first major deal.
Even though Lochte has banked on his edgy image, the scandal could put a dent in the 12-time Olympic medalist’s current endorsements with Speedo, Airweave and Polo Ralph Lauren.
Lochte relayed several details to NBC’s “Today” the morning after the incident that he later backtracked from.
Lochte and three US swimmers said they were robbed at gunpoint early Sunday, with Lochte saying their cab was pulled over by men impersonating police officers.
“I was like ‘whatever, ‘” Lochte said in his initial account.
And it overshadowed the efforts of US Olympians, who have dominated the medal count.
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Turcotte said the 20-year-old swimmer, who won a gold medal in the men’s 4×200-meter freestyle relay, handled the kerfuffle well ever since he and Conger were removed from a plane.
