<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;RIO DE JANEIRO \u2014 You got it all the time when people spoke of Ryan Lochte: A roll of the eyes, a loving grin, that&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;What can you do?&lt;/em&gt;&amp;nbsp;shrug. Lochte was everybody\u2019s favorite lunk, a five-star talent with smeary charm, at 32 the world\u2019s oldest teenager. He made swimming loose, mussed up its starchy sobriety with his \u201Cdudes\u201D and \u201Cjeahs\u201D, and won more Olympic medals than anyone not named Michael Phelps. He was, once, what marketers consigned to niche sports hopefully call a \u201Cpersonality\u201D, the kind that grabs the casual fan, delights late night hosts and threatens, every so often, to conquer pop culture.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the swimming world long tolerated the all-around great\u2019s many quirks, because, well, Lochte was doing something right. Didn\u2019t he score himself a reality show? Even NPR, an outlet you\u2019d never hear in Spicoli\u2019s van, dubbed Lochte, \u201Cthe platonic ideal of bro-dom.\u201D And he seemed perfectly harmless.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;You felt a residue of that sentiment even Thursday, when Lochte\u2019s half-baked account of being robbed at gunpoint Sunday morning\u2014cooked up with the&amp;nbsp;aid of U.S. Olympic teammates Jimmy Feigen, Jack Conger and Gunnar Bentz\u2014fell apart under a cascade of video footage, Lochte\u2019s shifting accounts, and conflicting testimony by Conger and Bentz&amp;nbsp;after they were hauled off their return flight home. Though it felt like a career-ender for Lochte, who just last week won his sixth Olympic gold, at least one victim seemed eager to forgive.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CNo apologies from him or the other athletes are needed,\u201D said Rio 2016 communications director Mario Andrada Thursday morning. \u201CWe need to understand that these kids were trying to have fun. They came here, they represented their country to the best of their ability, they trained for four years and they competed under gigantic pressure. Let\u2019s give these kids a break. Sometimes we take actions that we later regret. They are amazing athletes; Lochte is one of the best swimmers of alltime. They had fun, made a mistake: It\u2019s part of life. Life goes on.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 A legal breakdown of the latest developments in Ryan Lochte\u2019s Brazil misadventure\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For Lochte, yes: But he had the luxury of viewing the end of one of the most bizarre episodes in Olympic annals from home. As of late Thursday night,&amp;nbsp;Feigen remained in Rio and, according to the U.S. Olympic Committee, had provided a \u201Crevised statement\u201D with the hope of receiving his passport. Conger and Bentz, meanwhile, were interviewed for four hours and 15 minutes by Rio\u2019s Tourist Police on Thursday afternoon; they were then given their passports and permission to leave. As the pair emerged from the Leblon headquarters, a noisy swarm of reporters, cameramen and locals engulfed them en route to a car supplied by the U.S. consulate. Some voices yelled, \u201CLiars,\u201D and \u201CShame!\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to Fernando Veloso, chief of Rio\u2019s Civil Police, one of the two swimmers confirmed that no assault on their group occurred, and said Lochte was responsible for inventing the story. Neither Lochte, his attorney, or his agent responded Thursday to SI\u2019s requests for comment. Veloso also said that the remaining swimmers could face charges for falsely alleging a crime and for damaging property, and a fine or up to six months in jail if found guilty. One Brazilian law professor mused that, since the swimmers\u2019 first account instigated a police investigation, there\u2019s even a chance&amp;nbsp;of being indicted for \u201Ccalumnious denunciation,\u201D punishable by as many as eight years of detention.&amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But seeing that it\u2019s in the interest of the U.S. Olympic Committee, the State Department, the IOC and Rio 2016 to make this affair disappear, few expect any to face jail time; the return of the swimmers\u2019 passports was the prime condition of their appearance before police Thursday. If Andrada\u2019s stance is representative, and the Brazilian authorities do decide to \u201Cgive these kids a break,\u201D then soon everyone will be home. In time the affair will assume the air of a boozy adventure, a danger avoided, a crazy tale to tell.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But before we get there (and already you can sense people giving that &lt;em&gt;What can you do?&lt;/em&gt; shrug), let\u2019s pause a moment. It\u2019s true that none of the American swimmers were shot or pistol-whipped or beaten. Nobody involved was hurt. Nothing was lost, unless you count the faceless victims who went unprotected, the crimes that weren\u2019t investigated, the criminals that raped or robbed while police resources were devoted to picking apart&amp;nbsp;Lochte\u2019s tale. Let\u2019s not forget that, yet.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The central mystery, of course, is why the tale was told in the first place. The Olympic swim competition, after all, was done; nobody had broken training. Yet upon returning to the Athlete\u2019s Village in the early morning Sunday after a night of partying at Lagoa\u2019s Club France, Lochte told his mother, Ileana, in Rio that he had been robbed en route at gunpoint. The story broke soon after, but Lochte denied it to a USOC official, who denied it to the IOC, who denied it to the press.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That afternoon, though, Lochte\u2019s mother and then Lochte himself, on NBC, asserted in dramatic terms that a robbery had occurred. Four men impersonating police, he said, pulled over the swimmers\u2019 taxi in a false roadblock. Three were forced to lie facedown, but Lochte refused. \u201CThe guy pulled out his gun, he cocked it, put it to my forehead and he said, \u2018Get down,\u2019 and I put my hands up,\u201D Lochte told NBC. \u201CI was like, \u2018whatever.\u2019 He took our money, he took my wallet\u2014he left my cellphone, he left my credentials.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was a shocking vision, but all too believable to strangers and Rio residents alike. Thievery is a fact of life in most sections of the city; the use of \u201Cfalsa blitz\u201D, fake DUI roadblocks, in the city isn\u2019t rare. Two weeks before the Games began, a New Zealand jujitsu champion claimed to be kidnapped by uniformed men and forced to give them cash from two ATMs. By Monday, Lochte\u2019s story had taken full hold of the Olympics, forcing Andrada to \u201Capologize to those involved and regret that violence is an issue in these Games.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But inconsistencies in the swimmers\u2019 account, highlighted by surveillance footage showing their arrival three hours after originally stated, began to crop up. Police also received only vague answers in their initial interview with Lochte and another swimmer, and could find no evidence or witnesses that a crime had occurred. By Tuesday night, investigators were openly skeptical.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CThe first information that reached the police was from a taxi driver who drove two young women from the site of the party,\u201D Veloso said Thursday.&amp;nbsp;\u201CThat driver heard from the women that they had made out with the swimmers. They mentioned this, and that driver, upon learning about the case, telephoned in an account of what he heard from those young women in the taxi and brought it to the attention of the (tourist police). That suggested that the athletes, or at least one of them, had a motive to tell a story that was not true. If an athlete is in a relationship and doesn\u2019t want that other person to know why he stayed out all night, he has a motive to hide it.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 Watch the gas station footage of Ryan Lochte and teammates | Timeline of events\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Local authorities were motivated themselves. Inefficiencies, empty seats and a shrinking pool of volunteers has cast a pall over a Games already undermined by the nation\u2019s political and economic storms; the image of an Olympic great with a gun to his head would not be easily survived. But police could not afford to be wrong, either. \u201CWe want to be very careful here, because we don\u2019t want to smear anyone without having all the facts straight,\u201D said an official close to the investigation. \u201CBut if his story isn\u2019t true, then he has smeared Brazil.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;After Thursday\u2019s interviews with Conger and Bentz, police were convinced that the story wasn\u2019t true. Instead, Veloso said, the swimmers arrived at a Barra da Tijuca gas station in a taxi, and went to a bathroom; at least one U.S. athlete, according to the USOC, was involved in damaging its door, soap dish and mirror. A security guard approached the cab, warned them not to leave and called police. Lochte was \u201Cvery exalted,\u201D in his dealings with the security guard, Veloso said, \u201Cand appeared to be under the effects of alcohol.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The security guard then pulled out his gun, the swimmers sat down, and one of them\u2014Veloso said\u2014then offered to pay about $50 for the damage. Thursday night, USOC CEO Scott Blackmun issued a statement calling the athletes\u2019 behavior \u201Cunacceptable\u201D, but contended that two security guards brandished guns and demanded payment. Either way, all agreed the money was accepted. The swimmers climbed back into their taxi and drove off.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;All in all, that\u2019s not too bad a story to tell one\u2019s mother. Yet Lochte seemingly convinced himself that it\u2019d be better to&amp;nbsp;fabricate one that would hamstring his teammates, insult his hosts, produce a national embarrassment and spark an international incident. Why? The cruelest explanation can be found in the film \u201CRuthless People,\u201D when a cop looks down at a bleach-haired, dimwitted blackmailer and says, \u201CThis could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But intelligence was less the problem here than cynicism. Lochte apparently felt that Rio\u2019s well-publicized crime problems were so common, so exhausting, that no one could check his story\u2014and no one would care. And for two days, especially back home in America, he was almost right. \u201CThe facts speak louder,\u201D Andrada said. \u201CEverybody saw the story turn around, and we\u2019re obviously relieved\u2014and we might also make internal jokes about the fact\u2014but it\u2019s so clearly obvious that we had done nothing wrong in that particular case, that the facts became very eloquent.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yet even as the Lochte story melted away, others rushed in. Early Tuesday morning, a British athlete was robbed at gunpoint; team track officials warned that members should not go out at night, \u201Cgiven the current climate in Rio.\u201D Then, 24 hours later, a gunman forced Australian swimmer Josh Palmer to withdraw $1,000 from a Copacabana ATM. Thus Andrada could not afford to crow about even his one big public relations win. The losses just keep coming.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CThe job of Rio as a city and Brazil as a country is to protect our guests,\u201D he said Thursday. \u201CIf some were not protected as they needed to be, it doesn\u2019t look right or feel right for me to say, \u2018They were in the wrong place.\u2019 I cannot use a lame excuse. In the Americans\u2019 case we took the blow, and later life turned around. But in other cases, we\u2019re 99% certain that people were right to be upset. The world is our guest. We have a job to protect them.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He said this in a voice both weary and tense: Only three days left to these Rio Olympics. They could use a few good ones.\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/olympics/2016/08/19/ryan-lochte-robbed-video-usa-swimming-usoc-apology-rio-security>