US Olympic Committee apologized on Ryan Lochte and other swimmers behavior
Few days ago, the swimmers of the United States, including the gold medalist Ryan Lochte, claimed that Rio de Janeiro as host city of Olympics 2016 is not safe at all after they were robbed.
But after days of Brazilian police investigation, authorities insisted that the swimmers were not robbed instead they fabricated a story.
Due to this, the US Olympic Committee apologized to Brazil on the behaviors of their swimmers.
In a statement, the USOC apologized to Brazil for the swimmers’ behavior Thursday night, calling the incident a “distracting ordeal in the midst of what should rightly be a celebration of excellence.”
Prior to this, Brazil’s Presidential Chief of Staff Eliseu Padilha said on Thursday that U.S. Olympic swimmers had lied to Brazilian police about a robbery at the Rio de Janeiro Games and should be held accountable.
Rio’s civil police chief, Fernando Veloso, had said that U.S. gold medalists Ryan Lochte and Jimmy Feigen had lied about being robbed at gunpoint on Sunday morning along with two team mates.
“Right now, as we speak, what the police can affirm — there was no robbery the way it was reported or claimed by the athletes,” Veloso, chief of the Rio civil police, said in Portuguese at a news conference Thursday. “They were not victims of the criminal actions that they claimed they were.”
Although officials did admit that local security guards pulled a gun on Lochte and his fellow swimmers and extracted about $50 in cash from them.
Veloso said surveillance video and witness accounts confirmed that the swimmers, including Lochte, a 12-time Olympic medalist, damaged a bathroom door at a gas station in the Barra da Tijuca neighborhood before they returned to the athletes’ village early Sunday.
The athletes had told officials and media outlets that they were robbed at gunpoint. But as inconsistencies in their story emerged, speculation rose.
According to Veloso, the swimmers took a taxi from a club to the gas station and then vandalized the restroom, breaking the mirror, a soap dispenser and other things.
When local security guards saw them, they told the cab driver not to let them leave, but the athletes insisted on going, Veloso said.
One guard then used a “firearm to control” the swimmers — and demanded they pay for the vandalism, he said.
