For the past week, the world looked on in confusion as U.S. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte stated that he and teammates were robbed at gunpoint in Rio, only for Brazilian authorities to claim the story was false, and then finally information came out showing that the truth was likely somewhere in the middle.
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In the following hours and days, skepticism grew as inconsistent accounts of the incident began to emerge.
Stories like hers and many others were the ones the USOC would have preferred to see dominate discussion as the Rio Games end, instead of incessant talk about a mess that could have been easily avoided. Then, on Tuesday, August 16, Rio police said they “found no evidence” to support Lochte’s claims, stating that the athletes were simply confronted by security guards and asked to pay for the damage they left at the gas station. Officials say that is a fabrication and that, in fact, the swimmers vandalized the station. “They fabricated a story”.
At one point during the interview, Lochte became teary-eyed when asked about his fellow team-mates who had been taken off their flight home and detained at Rio Airport.
“The things that you do are going to be magnified and the mistakes that you make are going to have a light shined on them in a way that’s going to make it very hard for you to overcome”, Blackmun said.
The International Olympic Committee is now setting up a disciplinary commission to investigate Lochte and the three US swimmers he was with.
The 12-time gold medalist reiterated his view that a stranger pointed a gun at him and demanded money to let him leave. “We paid some money to compensate them for the torn poster, and returned to the Village in a different taxi”.
Lochte, 32, and three teammates allegedly vandalized a gas station and urinated on the building.
“We just wanted to get out of there”, he said.
“We were all frightened”, Lochte added. “They got in the auto and the people who work there were yelling, ‘Stop, stop.’ But they were not paying attention to them, and they were just heading to the taxi”. One of them said that they hadn’t done nothing wrong, and that the gas station was trying to get money from Americans.
Lauer: “You were striking a deal …a negotiated settlement to cover up some dumb behavior”.
“That’s why I’m taking full responsibility for it, because I overexaggerated the story”, Lochte said. “I took away from their accomplishments with this story”. None of this would have happened.
Lochte originally described the August 14 incident as an armed robbery, before the story unraveled.
Bentz and another teammate, Jack Conger, were pulled off their plane Thursday before returning to the US the next day.
“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 in his statement.
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“I also want to be forthright about the details of what transpired last Sunday”.
