American swimmer Ryan Lochte’s Olympic experience didn’t go as well as he had planned in the pool. But instead of leaving Rio with a shred of dignity and refocusing on what’s to come in his phenomenal career, he chose to get drunk, damage private property, then use his extreme privilege to exploit the city’s very real problems for his personal gain, much to the delight of the insatiable media.
Along the way he got his teammates publicly and humiliatingly dragged off of a plane by Brazilian authorities, hogged the focus of city Olympic authorities, and overshadowed the second week of the games — taking attention away from athletes who deserve it, and likely desperately need it.
It was, you could say, the most ungraceful Olympic exit in history.
To quickly recap, last weekend, news broke that Lochte and three other American swimmers were robbed at gunpoint on their way back to the Olympic village after a late night out. There was confusion from the get-go. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) denied the reports, saying the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) had spoken to Lochte and he had refuted the claims. But Lochte’s mother spoke with USA Today and confirmed that the robbery had indeed occurred.
Within hours, Lochte was on NBC talking to Billy Bush, telling his side of the story.
“We got pulled over, in the taxi, and these guys came out with a badge, a police badge, no lights, no nothing just a police badge and they pulled us over,” Lochte said. “They pulled out their guns, they told the other swimmers to get down on the ground — they got down on the ground. I 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.’ He took our money, he took my wallet — he left my cell phone, he left my credentials.”
Lochte’s story went viral in part because of his fame — he has 12 Olympic medals, and is the most decorated American swimmer behind Phelps — but also because there has been concern about safety and security at the Rio Olympics for months.
While some of the concern has been the product of first-world fear mongering, most of it has come from a place of reality. Crime in Brazil is a serious problem. There are approximately 42,000 gun-related deaths every year. Last year, that number was over 58,000.
Most of the crime is concentrated in the favelas, and impoverished, black people in Rio are particularly susceptible to violence, even from those who are supposed to be protecting them. Police in Rio killed over 100 people by the end of April this year, most of whom identified as black. In May, police killings in the city were up 135 percent over the previous year.
Officials in Rio tried to take steps to contain the violence, by employing a record 85,000 police and security officers during the Olympics, but despite these efforts, crime in the favelas drastically increased over the course of the games.
As carelessly assembled as it might have been, Lochte’s story was clearly honed to build on a narrative that already existed in Rio, and paint himself as both the victim and the hero.
The problem, as you know by now, is his story was missing a few key details. Security at a gas station did pull a gun on Lochte and his teammates, but only after they had damaged a door, broken the soap dispenser in the bathroom, urinated all over the gas station, tore down a sign, and attempted to leave without paying for any of the damage.
Security footage has made Lochte’s side of the story — which he gave on-camera to NBC immediately after telling USOC authorities that he would be quiet about the incident as investigations occurred — look more like a complete fabrication, if not just an exaggeration.
Why did he think he would be able to get away with it?
Emma Gray for the Huffington Post wrote that Lochte’s white male privilege is at the root of not only his decision making, but also the media’s initial inclination to believe him and then simply laugh away his transgressions. (Compare that to the way Gabby Douglas was treated for not smiling enough.)
In the Washington Post, Sally Jenkins has another theory.
“ The main quality Lochte has shown in all of this, apart from asininity, is obliviousness,” she wrote in a scathing column, which described Lochte as “the dumbest bell that ever rang.”
But while Lochte’s idiocy and pompousness are definitely factors here, his handling of this incident from start to finish was nothing short of shameful and calculating. He knew there was already a spotlight on violence in Rio, and he stroked that for sympathy. He knew that the media was going to be interested in this, so he soaked up every bit of attention. When he arrived back in the United States earlier this week before the scandal really blew up, he took to Twitter highlight other incidents of violence in Rio and promoted his Today Show appearances. (After tweeting about his hair, of course.)
Lochte issued an apology on Friday, where he continued to describe his encounter as “traumatic,” but said he regretted that the incident overshadowed the other athletes competing this week.
But it’s certainly a case of too little, too late. The 32-year-old ruthlessly used the privilege afforded to him by his race, gender, fame, fortune, and nationality to get himself out of trouble and stomped on his teammates, fellow Olympians, and those really suffering in Rio while he was at it. While he didn’t get away with it, the damage is already done.
The only good thing to come out of this? There’s finally something all Brazilians can agree on.
“ What’s truly remarkable is that the US swimmers have managed to do something that no Brazilian political official has been able to do: unite Brazil’s Olympic critics with Brazil’s Olympic organizers,” Dave Zirin wrote in The Nation. “[Brazil] is sick and tired of being the punching bag, the laughing stock, and the spittoon for debauchery of the Western world.”
Unfortunately, Lochte never got that message.