Brazilian police also allowed Jimmy Feigen to leave Brazil after he agreed to donate almost $11,000 to a charity in Rio De Janiero.
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Even though Ryan Lochte and his USA men’s swimming teammates are back in the United States after the Rio Olympics, the fallout from their much publicized incident does not appear to be over.
Initially, Lochte told TODAY and NBC News that men who appeared to be police officers robbed him and three of his teammates at gunpoint as they made their way back from a party.
Blackmun said he did not think the story involving Lochte should be the lasting image of a games where Americans dominated the medal count. “If I had not don’t that, none of this would have happened”. None of this would have happened. “And it was my immature behavior”.
Their story began to unravel when surveillance footage emerged showing them at a gas station before they were seen returning to the Olympic village in good spirits. Phelps carried the flag into the opening of what he says will be his final games, and now the bearer role – as well as maybe the role of being the face of the U.S. Olympic team – belongs to Biles. But Brazilian police said the swimmers had instead vandalized a gas station bathroom and gotten into a confrontation with an armed security guard.
Lochte told NBC’s Matt Lauer it was his fault that a fabricated story about a robbery caused an global Olympics scandal.
Nonetheless, a contrite Lochte said he understands why his drunken behavior brought shame to America. “Whether you call it a robbery or whether you call it extortion or us paying just for the damages”. The gun was drawn and pointed in Lochte’s direction, but was never at his forehead.
“I left details out…”
After Ryan Lochte, Gunnar Bentz, Jimmy Feigen and Jack Conger were robbed being threatened with a gun in Rio de Janeiro, Lochte comes clean and admits he over exaggerated in the statements about the incident. “They’re my teammates and I wanted to be there”. I’m not making me being intoxicated like an excuse, I’m not doing that at all. “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”. “I mean, it was my fault”, he had said to Today.
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“They let down the other athletes; they let down Americans; and they let down our hosts in Rio”, Blackmun said of Lochte, a 12-time medalist, and the other three swimmers. “I just wanted to make sure they were home safe before I came out to talk”.
