WASHINGTON ― Ryan Lochte on Saturday said he exaggerated a story about being robbed at gunpoint in Rio de Janeiro, speaking in his first televised interview since large portions of his initial account were debunked.
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In a separate interview with the USA network NBC, part of which also aired on Saturday night, Mr Lochte said he felt “hurt” watching footage of his team-mates being taken off their plane.
More of the interview will air on NBC’s primetime coverage of the Olympics this evening.
Police, however, later accused Lochte of fabricating the story.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has set up a disciplinary commission to investigate the incident and the four athletes’ behaviour. While Lochte returned to the US before a Brazilian judge ordered his passport seized, Feigen was forced to pay the equivalent of $10,800 to a Brazilian charity before he could leave Rio on Friday. But Brazilian authorities said the American athletes had lied about the robbery, and instead had a confrontation with an employee at a gas station they vandalized. He also said one of the alleged assailants had put a gun to his forehead.
According to the statement, translated from Portuguese, Deluz said he was told by a gas station attendant that four men urinated on the floor and broke an advertisement.
The Australian Olympic Committee says 10 athletes were detained at Friday’s Australia-Serbia men’s basketball semifinals out of concern their credentials had been tampered with so they could get inside.
Police have said the swimmers vandalised a toilet after a night of partying and armed guards confronted them and asked them to pay for the damage.
Conger and Bentz have given public statements appearing to cast Lochte’s original narrative into doubt.
The gold medalist, together with team mate Ryan Lochte, were blamed by police for falsely reporting that they had been robbed at gunpoint after a party early on Sunday.
The Olympian insisted that he was a victim of extortion because he was forced by armed guards to hand over money. “All we know is that there was a gun pointed in our direction and we were demanded to give money”.
On Wednesday, two of the men, Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger, were taken off a US-bound plane at Rio de Janeiro airport and questioned by police. Rio’s Civil Police said Thursday, “There was no robbery”. His statement came a day after Feigen reached a deal to donate nearly $11,000 to a Rio judo academy for low-income youth which enabled him to leave Brazil, according to his lawyer. I’m not making that an excuse.
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Ryan Lochte also posted mea culpa on his Twitter and Instagram Friday, stating “I want to apologize for my behavior last weekend – for not being more careful and candid in how I described the events of that early morning, and for my role in taking the focus away from the many athletes fulfilling their dreams of participating in the Olympics”.
