U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun said Sunday further action is coming in the matter of the 12-time swimming medalist and his three swimmer-bro buddies whose bogus story of a robbery at gunpoint has dominated the Rio de Janeiro Games. Citing surveillance video and witness testimony, they said the swimmers had vandalized the gas station restroom, then had been confronted by security guards, who took out their weapons and told them to pay for the damage before leaving the gas station.
Advertisement
In any event, before a more thorough investigation could be launched, Ryan Lochte managed to slip out of Brazil (some said, unfairly, that he had “fled” the country), while his three teammates were not only “detained”, but were actually removed from the airplane they had boarded.
“I just over-exaggerate part of it, the very first part, I was very intoxicated”, he told Brazil’s main broadcaster Globo.
Lauer told Lochte that the first version of his story regarding the robbery was about the mean streets of Rio de Janeiro and the version he hast told now is about the negotiated settlement that they had in order to cover up “dumb behavior”, E! Police had pulled Bentz and Conger off a flight on Wednesday (August 17) night for further questioning.
Lochte, who flew to the United States the day after Sunday’s incident, said he should have been more careful and candid in his account, but added that it had been traumatic to have a stranger point a gun at him in a foreign country and demand money.
Despite U.S. Olympic swimmer #Ryan Lochte’s tearful apology following the earlier scandal at Rio, the #LochteGate story isn’t ending just yet. “Those guys would never be in Rio, or were in Rio, none of this would have happened and it was my immature behavior”, said Lochte.
Lochte also apologized to the people of Rio and Brazil.
Lochte’s impact on the Rio Games started long after his work in the pool was complete. He and teammates Jack Conger, Gunnar Bentz and James Feigen went out partying on the night the swimming competition ended.
The global mess over the incident has threatened to overshadow the spirit of the Olympic games by stoking early fears of violence against athletes. “Regardless of the global attention that this case has had and the false testimony, I say that from a legal point of view. the guards carried out a crime”.
Advertisement
“They have forever put themselves on the kind of list that you don’t want to be remembered for”, DeFrantz told the AP. I don’t want to speculate on what those consequences might be.
