Conger, a swimmer at the University of Texas, will be suspended for four months, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
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United States swimmer Ryan Lochte will be suspended from his sport for 10 months and will not be allowed to participate in the 2017 world championship meet as a result of his involvement in a gas station incident in Rio de Janeiro during the Olympics, a person with knowledge of the situation told CNN contributor Christine Brennan on Wednesday.
Lochte is also banned from the 2017 world championship meet scheduled for July in Budapest, USA Today reported. Those sanctions, which end December 31, also strip funding and training access.
“Each of the athletes has accepted responsibility for his actions and accepted the appropriate sanctions”.
He also forfeits all USOC and USA Swimming medal funding for his gold medal at the 2016 Olympic Games, which includes a $100,000 bonus check, and will not be permitted to join Team USA at the White House visit or the USA Swimming’s annual Golden Goggles event.
Brazilian police have charged Lochte with falsely reporting a crime and that could lead to a six-month prison sentence.
“We got pulled over, in the taxi, and these guys came out with a badge, a police badge, no lights, no nothing just a police badge and they pulled us over”, Lochte said to NBC News at the time.
Lochte took his Olympic medals haul to 12 after helping capture the men’s 4×200 metres freestyle gold, but his achievement was overshadowed by his actions outside the pool in Rio.
A few days later, however, it was announced that Lochte will appear on the upcoming season of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars”.
The details Lochte initially embellished – about a gun being cocked against his forehead, for example – drew the attention of Rio authorities, who met with the swimmers to take statements and begin their own investigation, which quickly morphed into Rio authorities alleging at a news conference that the swimmers had filed a false police report.
“During an otherwise extraordinary Olympic Games, a small group of athletes had lapses in judgement and conduct that are unacceptable and not consistent with our expectations”, USA Swimming Executive Director Chuck Wielgus said in a statement.
Gunnar Bentz, left, and Jack Conger leave a police station in Rio on 18 August. “Unfortunately, this storyline took attention away from the athletes who deserved it the most”. The incident happened at the gas station, not on a highway, and the man who pointed a gun in Lochte’s direction was not a robber, but an armed security guard demanding restitution for the advertising sign Lochte had torn down. Lochte is banned through the end of June.
It also concluded the framework of what Lochte said was true – the swimmers were in a taxi that was prevented from leaving the gas station by an armed man who flashed a badge and ordered them out of the auto, and that they were held at gunpoint and forced to pay money, about $50, for damaging the sign.
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Meanwhile Feigen was forced to pay $11,000 to charity in order to leave Brazil after authorities confiscated his passport.
