Having paid, Blackmun said, they were permitted to leave.
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A full statement from the USOC describing the event stated that: “As we understand it, the four athletes (Bentz, Conger, Feigen and Ryan Lochte) left France House (Casa Franca) early in the morning of 14 August in a taxi headed to the Olympic village”.
He added: “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”.
“I am very proud to present my country in Olympic competition and this was a situation that could and should have been avoided”.
He said armed security guards then challenged the swimmers and drew their guns, telling them to sit down but Lochte stood up yelled at them – in what Bentz called a “heated verbal exchange”.
At that point, Bentz said, Lochte pulled a “framed metal advertisement” off a wall.
Bentz and Conger were pulled off their US -bound flight by local authorities earlier this week, then allowed to leave the country 24 hours later after being interviewed by police. Bentz and Conger answered questions for several hours at a Rio police station Thursday before flying out.
Lochte, 32, had alleged that he and three other swimmers had been robbed by people pretending to be police officers. When they realized there was no bathroom inside the gas station, Conger said they walked behind the gas station and urinated outside.
Rio police struggled to find evidence that supported Lochte’s claims and produced video footage that suggested the swimmers had got into an argument at the petrol station and that one of the swimmers had vandalised a toilet door.
Bentz and Conger were pulled off a return flight to the US earlier this week for further questioning.
The U.S. swimmers might have landed on American soil but the saga surrounding the four Olympians’ false claims of a gunpoint robbery appears to be far from over.
Feigen is the only member of the United States swimming team who has yet to return to America.
Conger, 21, says his statements to the authorities have been “truthful” and the entire time the investigation was going on, he was only being considered as a witness and not as a suspect.
During the two weeks of the Rio Games, the sporting action has been competing for headlines against a series of muggings and armed robberies of high-profile athletes and visitors in Rio de Janeiro, including two government ministers.
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“There has already been too much said and too many valuable resources dedicated to what happened last weekend, so I hope we spend our time celebrating the great stories and performance of these Games and look ahead to celebrating future successes”, he wrote.
