After it was found out that his tales of a Brazilian robbery were fabricated, and he ditched his team mates to head back to the United States before facing the music in Rio, Ryan Lochte sat down with Matt Lauer to tell his side of the story.
When asked about how he felt watching footage of his team mates being taken off of their flight as he sat home, an emotional Lochte answered, “[I felt] hurt. I let my team down. Like, I wanted to be there. I don’t want my team to think that I left and left them dry. They were my team mates, I wanted to definitely be there.”
“I wanted to help out any way I could,” Lochte continued. ” I just wanted to make sure that they were at home safe before I came out and talked.”
Lochte’s initial robbery story began to fall apart when authorities noticed inconsistencies in the players’ accounts of what happened. Upon review of surveillance footage, it was found that the swimmers vandalized a gas station restroom, then were confronted by security guards, who took out their weapons and demanded they pay for the damage before leaving the gas station.
When asked if Lochte ever had a gun pressed against his forehead, he replied, “That didn’t happen and that’s why — I over-exaggerated that part.” When asked why he would make up a lie, Lochte simply said that he didn’t know. He also says that when he reported the situation, he was still drunk, but doesn’t want to make that an excuse for what he did. “I’m not making me being intoxicated like an excuse, I’m not doing that at all,” Lochte said. “It was my fault and I shouldn’t have said it.”
Lauer then asked Lochte why he continued to maintain that he and his team mates were “victims”.
“It’s how you want to make it look like. Whether you call it a robbery, whether you call it extortion, or us paying just for the damages, like, we don’t know,” Lochte responded. “All we know is that there was a gun pointed in our direction, and we were demanded to give money.”
You can read/watch the rest of the interview HERE.
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