Lochte: “I over exaggerated that story”. None of this would’ve happened. “And it was my immature behavior”. A portion of the interview aired during the network’s prime time Olympics coverage, with the remainder scheduled to be shown on Monday during NBC Nightly News.
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Here is what the genius said that was translated, ” I think we were still in shock, but we were trying to forget everything, and we were still intoxicated.
“Brazil doesn’t deserve that”, he said to Globo. ‘Cause I was intoxicated. “I was immature, and I made a stupid mistake”.
In a statement released Sunday, USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun said that the four swimmers “let down our athletes”, let down America as a whole, and let down the hosts of the 2016 Rio #Olympics, considering the “wonderful job” they did in organizing the 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. “Whether you call it a robbery, whether you call it extortion, or us paying just for the damages, like, we don’t know”.
Asked why he would make up the dramatic detail, Lochte said: “I don’t know why”.
“We just wanted to get out of there”, he told Lauer, 58, when pressed about the controversial video footage of the men. “We gave them money, and we wanted to get out”.
“What I’m trying to get at is the first version of the story you told, Ryan, was much more about the mean streets of Rio”, Lauer told him. As Lochte’s story has fallen apart, people have wondered why he’s made up this easily refutable story about a gunpoint robbery.
This video below is a portion of a news segment originally broadcast on Brazil’s O Globo, commenting on the incident involving us swimmers at a gas station, as captured on surveillance video.
Lauer questioned Lochte’s story in the clip of the interview, asking why if the swimmers were speaking through an impromptu translator that they viewed that as a robbery rather than a settlement.
“All we know was there was a gun pointed at our direction, and we were demanded to give money”, he told Lauer during the Saturday taping of the interview.
He said he had waited until his teammates returned to the US before speaking again about the incident. He and teammates Jack Conger, Gunnar Bentz and James Feigen went out partying on the night the swimming competition ended. The Associated Press on Thursday reported that Conger told police that Lochte fabricated the robbery narrative.
They boarded a plane Wednesday night to leave Rio, but authorities removed the pair from the jet. Feigen came home Friday night after reaching a deal with a judge to pay $10,800.
Lochte appeared on the verge of tears when he described his feelings over being back in the United States while the three other swimmers were interrogated in Brazil.
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“If they give me that chance I definitely know I can turn this around and become that role model for little kids”, Lochte said. “I wanted to be there”.
