Rio 2016Schedule |
(Getty)
COLUMN
| The American swimmer’s conceit intersected with the delicate
political issues of violence and police corruption in Brazil, creating a
perfect storm that showed his disrespect for not only the host nation
but his teammates, as well.
In
the U.S. swimmer's statement, he did not admit to misleading Brazilian
police. He said he wanted to wait until "the legal situation was
addressed."
Ryan Lochte apologizes ‘for not being more careful and candid’
U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte has issued an apology for claiming he was robbed at gunpoint early Sunday morning after a night of partying, when in actuality he and three teammates were detained at gunpoint after vandalizing a Rio gas station.
According to USA Today’s Christine Brennan, an apology was the only way for Lochte to avoid a lifetime ban by USA Swimming, the sport’s governing body in this country. Lochte, a 12-time Olympic medalist who has competed in four Olympic Games, had said before last weekend’s events that “I’m not done with this sport” and that he would again swim competitively for the United States, a tall order at age 32.
In his apology, Lochte did not go so far as to admit he made up the robbery tale. He instead used carefully parsed words to admit a lapse in judgment. On his Instagram page, Friday’s apology sits two squares to the left of an earlier post in which he writes “it is true that my teammates and I were the victims of a robbery early Sunday morning.”
Lochte, Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger already had flown back to the United States.
TMZ reported Friday morning that all four swimmers told the same robbery tale — that they were in a cab when robbers posing as police stopped them and demanded cash — when interviewed Sunday by U.S. Olympic Committee officials.
“They
knew it was a lie. But they did not have to go public,” the lawyer
said. "They did not think it would have a more serious consequence.”
- By
Ryan Lochte: A champion swimmer caught in a riptide of self-absorption
RIO DE JANEIRO — Ryan Lochte is the dumbest bell that ever rang. The 32-year-old swimmer is so landlocked in juvenility that he pulled an all-nighter with guys young enough to call him uncle. His story to NBC’s Billy “what-are-you-wearing” Bush had the quality of a kid exaggerating the size of a fish, and notice how he was the hero of every detail. That was always the most dubious, implausible part. Look, having a gun drawn on you in the small hours was no doubt unnerving and an overreaction by the security guard. It’s even remotely possible that Lochte really did interpret the demand for cash as a “robbery” of sorts. But to do so, he had to be so impervious to his own odious punk behavior — and his view of that gas station had to be so low — that he didn’t think the vandalizing was worth anything. He must have thought Ryan Lochte’s pee was gold dust.
There is a special category of obnoxious American “bro” that Lochte represents, in his T-shirt and jeans and expensive suede footwear, which he showed off on social media that night at the party along with the price tag. “We’re 6k deep here,” he captioned it. Is there anything worse, in any country, than a bunch of entitled young drunks who break the furniture and pee on a wall? There is no translator needed for that one, no cultural norm that excuses it. If I had been working at that Brazilian gas station, I might have pulled a gun on them, too.
Jack Conger is 21. Gunnar Bentz is 20. James Feigen is 26. What a leader of young men Lochte is. You can see the bathroom door appear to burst out of its wooden frame on the security video, presumably when one of those oafs couldn’t open it and decided to kick it.
The Post's Cindy Boren explains why Brazilian authorities temporarily prevented three U.S. swimmers from returning home, and what is next for the state of the investigation into Ryan Lochte's story of an alleged robbery. (T.J. Ortenzi, Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
Inherent in all of Lochte’s statements in this controversy is a lack of respect. You suspect that is what drew such ire from Brazilian authorities, who made a massive public display out of jerking Conger and Bentz off a plane and detaining them for questioning and recommended charges against Lochte and Feigen. Lochte has played a trivial, frivolous game with the issue of Brazilian police ineffectualness and corruption. Two things are going on here: Lochte’s self-promoting prevarications and the sensitivity of Rio authorities, who have been portrayed as incapable of keeping athletes safe amid other Olympic breakdowns.
There have been a lot of genuine robberies of Olympic athletes and officials. A New Zealand athlete was kidnapped by fake police and driven to ATMs. Two Australian coaches were robbed at knifepoint on Ipanema Beach. After one of their athletes was robbed Tuesday morning, British track and field officials warned athletes that it is not worth the risk of going out, “given the current climate in Rio.”
The police need to show that fears are overstated and these Games are secure — though they are not, particularly — and the stupid Americans offered them something with which to save face. Fernando Veloso, the Civil Police chief, said that Lochte had “stained” the city by inventing a crime that didn’t happen.
Lochte’s conceit intersected with a delicate political issue, and it made a perfect storm. His claim to NBC that men posing as police pulled over the taxi and he heroically resisted the robbers with a gun pressed to his forehead was an especially ludicrous detail — and the very thing that drew the attention of authorities, who know full well that anyone who defies a bandit in Rio gets shot on the spot, and they don’t leave you with your cellphone.
In his shifting public accounts, Lochte never mentioned that busted-up bathroom. Now put yourself in the shoes of the overrun and pride-stung local police when they saw that video of the Americans returning to the Athletes’ Village a little after 6 a.m. so cheerfully buzzed, with Lochte blithely twirling his credential on a chain and all of them still in possession of their cellphones and watches.
Brazilian authorities say Ryan Lochte and several other U.S. swimmers fabricated their story about being robbed at a gas station on Aug. 14. Here's why. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
Equal to his disrespect of the gas station owner and the police is Lochte’s disrespect to his fellow swimmers. First he portrayed his U.S. teammates as dropping to the ground while “I refused,” as if he alone had the temerity to remain standing. Yeah, right. This is a guy who apparently lied to his own mother. Then he flew home, leaving the younger swimmers to deal with the fallout. And when back in the United States, he made moronic postings on social media, deaf to the tension they were undergoing while detained in Rio, their passports seized.
The main quality Lochte has shown in all of this, apart from asininity, is obliviousness. First he tweeted about his hair, which he had dyed a silvery-white before the Games. Then on Thursday morning, even as Conger and Bentz were in a police station and authorities were mulling potential charges, he posted an idiotic video of himself. It was a distortion-lensed, cartoonish video of him babbling at his friend and fellow American swimmer Elizabeth Beisel. Lochte eventually deleted it. Which was too bad because it was a perfect portrait of a halfwit.
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