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Brennan: Ryan Lochte owes Rio, Olympics an apology

RIO DE JANEIRO – For well over 100 hours now, Ryan Lochte and his story have hijacked these Olympic Games. No matter what happened in that gas station, no matter how muddled the whole embarrassing mess still might be, Lochte made up a lie to cover up alleged vandalism at the very least, and in so doing, stole the heart and soul out of the second week of the 2016 Rio Games.

Ryan Lochte has returned to the U.S. while three of his teammates are forced to stay in Brazil and meet with law enforcement officials. (Photo: Rob Schumacher, USA TODAY Sports)

RIO DE JANEIRO – For well over 100 hours now, Ryan Lochte and his story have hijacked these Olympic Games. No matter what happened in that gas station, no matter how muddled the whole embarrassing mess still might be, Lochte made up a lie to cover up alleged vandalism at the very least, and in so doing, stole the heart and soul out of the second week of the 2016 Rio Games.

Lochte and his three U.S. swimming teammates owe literally thousands of people an apology: Rio 2016 Olympic officials, the International Olympic Committee, the U.S. Olympic Committee and, most of all, the athletes of these Games.

Since he has returned to the United States while his three younger teammates twist in the wind in Rio, Lochte has found time to tweet about turning his greenish-gray hair back to its original color and send a silly photo of himself to a friend to celebrate a birthday.

He has found no time, however, to apologize for stealing the spotlight from the hundreds of athletes who have spent years of their life training for the glory of competing on the world’s biggest stage this week, instead finding themselves listening to a story about four drunk American swimmers and their scary escapades in the early morning hours last Sunday.

Lochte at first told NBC he was robbed at gunpoint. Then he changed his story and said it was an incident at a gas station that got out of hand. The Brazilian authorities on Thursday said that Lochte and the three other U.S. swimmers — Jimmy Feigen, Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger — vandalized and publicly urinated at a gas station, and a gun was pulled by a security officer because of the size and belligerence of the Americans.

Wherever the truth lies, it’s going to take a while before all of this is sorted out, if it ever truly is.

But this much is clear: if Lochte’s mother had not talked about the alleged “robbery” Sunday morning, and if Lochte himself had not decided to tell NBC later that day that a gun was pointed at his forehead, none of us likely would have ever heard about it.

Doesn’t that sound nice right about now?

What an incredible disappointment Lochte has shown himself to be this week. The 32-year-old laid-back social media darling who has won 12 medals over four Olympic Games, including a gold medal in a relay here, is supposedly a veteran, a team leader, a role model.

Yet, at the first sign of trouble, he slipped out of Rio as fast as he could (whether he was planning to leave that day or not is another matter), knowing he had lied, knowing that the other three swimmers who were part of that lie were left behind.

Incidents that would be seen simply as college hi-jinks or pranks back at home take on an entirely different meaning at an Olympic Games. Of course they do. The world is watching, and every single athlete is representing his or her nation in a manner that is magnified by the spectacle of it all.

A case in point: at the 1988 Summer Olympics in South Korea, two American swimmers, Troy Dalbey and Doug Gjertsen, took a large Korean mask from a bar in Seoul.

A silly prank? Of course it was.

What happened next should give Lochte and his pals pause. Dalbey and Gjertsen were kicked off the U.S. Olympic team, sent home and forced to apologize to Seoul Olympic organizers in writing, then were suspended for 18 months by USA Swimming.

Lochte has yet to face the music from that same national governing body — the organization that has twice thrown the book at Michael Phelps in the past eight years with three- and six-month suspensions for appearing in a photo with a marijuana pipe and a second DUI, respectively.

And one can only imagine how Lochte’s sponsors are feeling this week.

Add in the storyline of these particular Olympic Games, that Rio is a beautiful but troubled city, riddled by street crime, so when Lochte says he was robbed with a gun to his head, he has fed into a narrative that causes Americans to knowingly nod their heads, and proud Brazilians to shudder at the embarrassment.

It turns out that Lochte allegedly was the one causing the trouble, not the other way around. In covering up his own egregious misbehavior with a series of arrogant and bold lies, he put an entire Olympic Games on edge.

Shame on him.

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