“I don’t know why”, Lochte simply said, “I shouldn’t have said anything”. “I was intoxicated”, Lochte responded.
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“I let my team down”, said Lochte. “I then suggested to everyone that we needed to leave the area and we returned to the taxi”, Bentz said in his statement.
“It’s how you want to make it look like”, Lochte told Lauer.
“There was a gun pointed in our direction”. Police have also said they vandalized a gas station restroom but the swimmers dispute that. The players, including Lochte, have admitted that they paid security guards for the damage. According to Bentz, two security guards drew their guns and made the swimmers exit the vehicle, at which point Lochte got involved. No guns were drawn during this exchange, but we did see a gun tucked into one of the guard’s waistband. And we wanted to get out of there as quick as possible. “So we gave them money and we got out”.
“I over-exaggerated that story, and if I had never done that, we wouldn’t be in this mess”, Lochte told Lauer, taking responsibility for his teammates and admitting that he “definitely had too much to drink that night”.
Jack Conger, one of four U.S. Olympic swimmers caught up in a scandal over a claim of a robbery during the games in Rio de Janeiro, issued a statement today saying he regrets “the trouble and embarrassment this event has brought to the people of Brazil”.
The story added that Lochte would be remembered “as an emotionally stunted lying fool”.
The episode, which has embarrassed the U.S., saw Lochte and three other gold medal-winning USA swimmers embroiled in drama after he gave a shocking – and false – account of how they had been robbed at gunpoint.
Lauer pressed him on why he didn’t tell the truth in the first place.
Ryan Lochte talks to NBC’s Matt Lauer on August 20, 2016. “I took away from their accomplishments with this story”. I over-exaggerated that part. Sensational as it was, Lochte’s account needed more reporting before it entered NBC’s news ecosystem. “It was hours after the incident happened [when I spoke to Bush], I was still intoxicated”. Swimmer Gunnar Bentz later said they all did.
The four U.S. gold medal-winning swimmers hoped to draw a line under the scandal that erupted when Lochte went public with a shocking report of how they were mugged on their way early Sunday back from a party in Rio de Janeiro.
The Olympian initially reported to Today’s Billy Bush that the taxi he shared with Bentz, Jack Conger, and James Feigen, was pulled over by men posing as police officers. Feigen gave almost $11,000 to charity to avoid prosecution.
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“I want to offer a honest apology to the United States Olympic Committee, USA Swimming, the extraordinary women and men of Team USA, and the University of Georgia”. Like, I don’t want them to think that I left and left them dry because they were my teammates. When the confrontation escalated, the security guard took out his pistol and made them sit on the ground.
