“I definitely had too much to drink and I was very intoxicated”.
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Lochte apologized and said Brazil “doesn’t deserve that”. ‘Cause I was intoxicated. “I hope they can accept my apology”, he said.
A Good Samaritan who tried to intervene in a scuffle between four U.S. Olympic swimmers and security guards in a gas station in Brazil said the athletes begged not to call police, according to a statement given to police.
“You told me on the phone, Ryan, you said, ‘We are victims here”. Whether you call it a robbery or whether you call it extortion or us just paying for the damages, we dont know.
The interview, to be aired in its entirety Monday, came a week after Lochte told cops a tale of Olympic proportions to cover up his and three teammates’ vandalism of a Rio gas station.
When asked by NBC’s Matt Lauer why he had “left details out”, Lochte replied: “I don’t know why”.
So, did he strike a deal to pay for his damages and avoid the police?
We just wanted to get out of there, Lochte said, adding the swimmers were frightened. Deluz said a gun wasn’t pointed at the swimmers. We just wanted to get out of there as quick [ly] as possible.
“I’m taking full responsibility for it because I overexaggerated that story and if I never did that, we wouldn’t be in this mess”, he shared.
Lochte had already apologized on Friday for saying that the swimmers had been mugged by robbers pretending to be police on their way back from an all-night party.
Once the story of Lochte’s lie became an worldwide controversy, the swimmer took to social media to apologize.
That’s in sharp contrast to Lochte’s original story, in which he claimed he was robbed at gunpoint. Lauer pressed Lochte on whether he understood what the guards were proposing.
Ryan Lochte chatted with NBC’s Matt Lauer in New York City on Saturday, in a bid to clean up the media firestorm he created earlier this week. “I took away from their accomplishments with this story”.
As recently as Friday, Lochte’s USA -based attorney, Jeff Ostrow, was telling reporters Lochte stood by his characterization of the incident as a robbery at gunpoint. Bentz and Conger were taken off a plane for questioning before being allowed to leave.
Gunnar Bentz said on Friday that the swimmers had not vandalized the restroom, but admitted they had urinated on a wall nearby. The people of Rio or Brazil, the authorities, everyone there put on great games. Their passports were returned Thursday, and they flew out of Rio de Janeiro that night. James Feigen, the swimmer who called in the robbery, was ordered to pay almost $11,000 in damages for falsely reporting a crime.
Later on in the interview, Ryan fought back tears as he described how he felt being back in the US while his teammates were detained in Brazil for further interrogations.
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“I let my team down”, Lochte said. I wanted to be there.
