Police announced Thursday that their investigation found the swimmers were not the victims of a robbery.
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“After Jack and I both tugged at him in an attempt to get him to sit back down, Ryan and the security guards had a heated verbal exchange, but no physical contact was made”, Bentz said.
Ryan Lochte, the American swimmer, apologised yesterday (Friday) for concocting a story about being mugged to cover up the fact that he and three team-mates had smashed up a petrol station in Rio.
On Instagram Friday, Lochte wrote to his 1.9 million followers, “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”.
“But regardless of the behavior of anyone else that night, I should have been much more responsible in how I handled myself and for that am sorry to my teammates, my fans, my fellow competitors, my sponsors, and the hosts of this great event”. Instead, they said Lochte had vandalized a local gas station early Sunday and had an altercation with a security guard.
In both cases, CAS said “the athlete is disqualified and excluded from the Olympic Games Rio 2016”. An armed security guard is said to have waved a gun at them and demanded they hand over cash to pay for the damage before they were allowed to leave.
As a result of the discrepancies, two of Lochte’s fellow swimmers were pulled from their flights back to the US for further questioning, and a third has agreed to pay about $11,000 to a Brazilian charity in exchange for permission to leave the country.
Bentz and Conger were pulled off a plan to the United States that evening so they could be questioned. When they realized there was no bathroom inside the gas station, Conger said they walked behind the gas station and urinated outside.
Feigen, along with his teammates Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger and 12-time Olympic medal victor Ryan Lochte testified to having been attacked in the early hours of Sunday morning while returning to the Olympic Village in a taxi after attending a party.
The charity, the Reaction Institute, which brings sports to low-income communities and helped train Brazilian gold medalist judoka Rafaela Silva, said the money had been paid and would be used to fully enclose a judo arena near the City of God slum.
Conger said Lochte then ripped off a sign on the door of an outside bathroom “and made a lot of noise”, according to summaries of their statements taken by Rio police.
Lochte said he wanted to wait until their situations were resolved before issuing a statement.
Feigen is still resolving his charges before returning to the U.S.
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CAS said it was up to the International Cycling Union (UCI) and International Swimming Federation (FINA) to decide on the athletes’ punishments following the Games.
