In the spring of 2013, the swimmer Ryan Lochte starred in a short-lived reality show called “What Would Ryan Lochte Do?” The show was peppered with Lochte’s catchphrase—“Jeah”—and in each episode he confronted a different niche dilemma. For instance, in the first season’s finale, “What Would Ryan Lochte Do—on Spring Break?” The show was cancelled after one season, due to poor ratings, but, in the past week, the world has been plunged into a real-life reboot: “What Would Ryan Lochte Do—If He Got Mugged at the Olympics?”
The reports of Lochte’s stolen/not-stolen (but maybe actually stolen, but maybe not) wallet are confusing, and have frequently conflicted, but the time line most people agree on goes something like this. On Sunday morning, rumors spread around the Rio Olympic Village that Lochte and three of his teammates, Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger, and Jimmy Feigen, had been mugged the night before. A spokesman for the International Olympic Committee initially told journalists that no incident of the sort had taken place. Later in the day, however, Lochte’s mother insisted that, yes, her son had indeed been mugged. Then Lochte himself gave a detailed account of the episode, in an interview with NBC’s Billy Bush, saying that he and his fellow-swimmers had been heading back to the Olympic Village early in the morning in a cab when they were pulled over by individuals who appeared to be police, who showed them a badge, took out guns, and took some of their wallets, plus some cash. They also told the swimmers to get on the ground. Lochte said that the others complied, but he refused: “I was like, ‘We didn’t do anything wrong, so I’m not getting down on the ground.’ And then the guy pulled out his gun, he cocked it, put it to my forehead, and he said, ‘Get down,’ and I put my hands up. I was like, ‘Whatever.’ ”
Following Lochte’s interview, the U.S. Olympic Committee released a brief statement confirming that the mugging had occurred. The I.O.C. then retracted its earlier denial, saying that it had initially received incorrect information from the U.S.O.C. At this point, there was no reason to doubt the swimmers, and the scandal that appeared poised to erupt was about some sort of I.O.C. cover-up. Had the authorities tried to keep the world from finding out that one of the most famous Olympians at the Games had a gun held to his head in the streets of Rio de Janeiro? But the story soon turned again.
On Tuesday, the Rio police (who started investigating the incident after seeing news reports) announced that they were having trouble confirming the swimmers’ accounts, and that they had been unable to locate the driver of the taxi. A Brazilian judge issued a statement saying that there were inconsistencies between the accounts given to authorities by Lochte and by Feigen. The judge ordered that the men’s passports be seized, so that they wouldn’t leave the country before further questioning. Lochte, as it happened, was already back in the United States. But the other three were still in Brazil—Bentz and Conger were pulled off their plane back home just before it took off. Questions arose as to whether they’d made it all up.
On Wednesday, what little coherence the story had left fell away. Lochte gave an interview to Matt Lauer, introducing different details into his account. This time, the robbery happened not after they were pulled over but while their cab was stopped in a parking lot. The gun hadn’t been held to his head; it had been pointed in his direction. Feigen, meanwhile, told a reporter, “I can’t talk right now. I’m being shit-stormed right now.” The more you looked, the more confused things became. Did the swimmers leave the club around four, as they said, or a little before six, as some reports claimed? In a security video that became public, of the swimmers returning to the Olympic Village just before 7 A.M., did they look relaxed and jokey, and not like people who had just been mugged, as the Brazilian judge described it, or did they look “drained and agitated” as they “slunk back,” as the Daily Mail reported? Was the fact that they all appeared to have their phones and watches in the video proof that they’d lied, or proof that Lochte had been precise when he said that their wallets and money were stolen? Were their accounts inconsistent because they were too traumatized, or too intoxicated, or because they’d made the whole thing up to cover up some nefarious activity? A common speculation was, as Google Translate’s version of the Brazilian blog O Antagonista put it, “it seems that there are women in the middle.”
On Thursday, another video emerged. This one appeared to show the four swimmers in some sort of altercation with the staff of a gas station in Rio at around 6 A.M. on Sunday. In a press conference Thursday afternoon, the city police recounted the results of their investigation so far. The armed robbery was fabricated, they said. According to evidence at the site and witness testimonies, the swimmers had not been robbed but, rather, had drunkenly vandalized a gas-station bathroom. They argued with the staff and, at some point, a security guard did pull a gun, “to control them,” because Lochte was getting “extremely upset.” In the end, the swimmers gave the station manager some money and left before law enforcement arrived. Bentz and Conger, who never testified about the robbery story, were allowed to fly home after talking to the police. On Friday, it was announced that Feigen will get his passport back after he pays a fine, for false reporting, of thirty-five thousand reais (approximately ten thousand eight hundred dollars), which will go to a charity. The U.S.O.C. has issued an apology.
It’s still not clear yet why the swimmers would fabricate the robbery. The police, whose investigation continues, suggested that maybe they were trying to hide something that had happened earlier in the night involving two young women, something hinted at twice during the press conference on Thursday. Or maybe the swimmers were just trying to divert attention from the vandalism incident. Or maybe (my guess) they started telling friends the crazy story of their amped-up night out, and how a gun had been pulled on them, and realized that they were going to need a less incriminating setup for the tale. Lochte’s lawyer issued a statement on Thursday more or less conceding the details but still sticking to the heart of the original story: “A gun was pointed at the swimmers, and they were forced to get out of their cab and give up their money. No matter what happened at that gas station, the swimmers were robbed by people with a gun appearing to be law enforcement.” On Friday, Lochte apologized, on Instagram, for “my behavior last weekend—for not being more careful and candid in how I described the events of that early morning.”
The layers of confusion have been multiplied by the crisscrossing motivations involved: the determination of Rio to have a good Olympics and show the world a polished face; the tendency of the Olympics as an institution to protect its image (“We need to understand that these kids were trying to have fun,” an I.O.C. spokesman said on Thursday); the entitlement and skittish fears of some young American dudes abroad. But would this all have played out in such a tortuous way if it had been anyone but Lochte, whose bag-of-rocks demeanor is so foundational to his persona, at the center of it? (Lochte features in all the headlines about the story. Meanwhile, the Times has published an article on his companions, the ones who were questioned by police in a foreign country, titled “Who Are the Swimmers Who Were with Ryan Lochte?”) Much of the “breaking news” in this story in the past week has revolved around guessing at the limits of Lochte’s plausible behavior. Would Lochte solicit a prostitute? Why would Lochte lie to his mom? Would Lochte be like “Whatever” with a gun held to his head? Would Lochte really not report a violent crime because, as he told USA Today, he was afraid that he and his teammates would “get in trouble”? Would Lochte horse around like a teen-ager just after his life had been threatened?
This is the essential mystery of Lochte: athletic success at the level he has achieved takes almost superhuman mental fortitude and edge. Either all of that vanishes when he steps out of the pool or he’s a deeply gifted actor, or he has a kind of stupid genius always at work in him. You could argue that Lochte knew what he was doing all along—that by being forcefully, bullheadedly himself, he'd either be believed or shrugged off as an idiot. Or you could say that his mugging story was so poorly thought through that it reached a level of profundity, probing at the dark sides of one of our most feel-good institutions. You might be right either way. It’s hard to tell.
