The Globe article shows the swimmers in warm-up outfits that slightly resemble those of our courageous fighter pilots or astronauts (“Ryan Lochte posts apology for Rio controversy”, Sports, Aug. 19).
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“I have no idea”.
Lochte said that he is taking full responsibility about the matter because if he did not over exaggerate the story, they would not be in such a mess. As opposed to Lochte’s statement before that the gun was pointed at his head, he retracted that and said that the gun was pointed in their general direction. He admits that he “over-exaggerated” the incident and blames its aftermath on his “immature behaviour”. “I’m not making me being intoxicated like an excuse, I’m not doing that at all”, he said. “I was immature and I made a stupid mistake”.
The incident stoked worries about the safety of competitors and visitors to Rio, which has a long history of violent crime, though Brazil’s sports minister insisted that athletes who remained on the Olympic site had experienced no problems.
But, in a segment of this interview, played over the weekend, when Lauer said Rio cops called him and his teammates, not victims but “vandals”, Lochte insisted, “It’s how you want to make it look like, whether you call it a robbery, whether you call it extortion, or us paying just for the damages”. Police have also said they vandalized a gas station restroom but the swimmers dispute that.
“I think that we all understand that they let down our athletes, that they let down Americans, and they really let down our hosts in Rio who did such a wonderful job and we feel very badly about that.” aid USOC CEO, Scott Blackmun at a news conference in Rio de Janeiro.
“They put on a great games”.
“Hopefully the lesson learned more than anything else is you’re representing your country, you’re representing your sport, you’re representing a movement”, Blackmun said. I wanted to be there. “Once he did, you could see me go like this [hands up], and that’s when we sat down”.
Bentz and Conger got yanked off a flight back to the USA while trying to fly out of Brazil as authorities investigated Lochte’s armed-robbery report.
Early Sunday morning I was with US swimming teammates celebrating at the French House.
Lochte responded, “I don’t know why…” “Yes, so then we had to give them money”, Ryan said.
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U.S. Olympic authorities have promised further action against Lochte, Lauer added this morning.
