RIO DE JANEIRO—First, pretend you are stupid. This may be difficult, since you may not be someone who thinks Donald Trump is qualified to oversee the most powerful nation on earth, or that
jeah is a good new word. But it will be instructive, and is important. Get dumb. Thick as a whale omelette, as the old saying goes. Bro.
So, you are Ryan Lochte. You have completed
your Olympics. You did great, but were not the best American swimmer, or the headliner. You are never the headliner. But you were the only one to do it with bleached-blond hair, so you have that going for you. You got out with three younger teammates: Jack Congar, Gunnar Bentz and James Feigen, at least two of which might be stage names, who knows, right? Anyway.
You party. You party late into the Rio night and early into the Rio morning. Dude, it’s lit. You stop at a gas station, and you have to pee. Wait, the door is locked! Bro, break the door! Let’s pee outside, fine. OK. Hahaha.
Ah crap, the cops. Or something, whatever.
They have guns. OK, sit down. They want you to pay for the door. How much, bro? 100 reals? That is too real, bro. Get it? Hahahaha. OK, that’s like $40, fine. All good, let’s go home.
OK, now be your own smart, Toronto Star-reading self again. Snap out of it. At this point, it’s OK, right? We’ve all done stupid things while drinking, while young, maybe even when 32 years old, with peroxide-bleached hair. Nobody in the media knows what happened. The gas station seems cool, you paid them. You got home with your phones, your wallets, your credentials, your watches. All good.
OK, back to having the intellect and strategic acuity of a sea cucumber. It is at this point that you talk to your mom. You are well known for partying. You had a reality show called
What Would Ryan Lochte Do? There was some partying. It didn’t last the season, but parts of the memories last forever.
So here’s the plan: tell your mom you were robbed. Maybe that you lost your wallet, even. They pulled guns on you at a gas station and you lost your wallet. Dude. Sure.
OK, let’s stay smart, since being dumb too often can become a habit. It is at this point that a smart person might ask, why tell the story? What are you trying to cover up? If your mom asks what happened, go with this: We partied, got a little dumb, had to pay for a door. They pulled guns, can you believe it? But we’re fine.
Or: a story about being robbed, which your mom tells the media, which you then repeat to NBC. Not only that: you render your younger teammates as cowardly, sidewalk-hugging goofs, while you stand and face down the barrel of a gun and say, like, whatever. You are the hero of this tale, bro.
This is the part where the only explanation that anybody can think of so far is, he’s really dumb. Maybe he was drunk enough that this is how he remembered it? Maybe he also lost his wallet while partying? Maybe it was traumatic? He didn’t look traumatized when he returned to the athletes’ village, but you never know.
Anyway, all that happened was an international incident. Lochte got on a plane home before the authorities demanded his passport, but police
pulled two of his teammates off a plane, and the one whose passport was sought by a Brazilian judge didn’t show for the flight. This was like the Olympics version of Argo, except that the plane didn’t get out in time and the Canadian embassy wisely stayed the hell out of it. To paraphrase my friend Mina Kimes of ESPN: It’s not the crime, it’s the pool cover-up.
Lochte has always craved fame, it seems: maybe it’s not being a headliner, maybe it’s just him. There’s nothing wrong with that, in and of itself. But he’s the most famous dummy in the world not running for President, right now.
Let’s focus on the positive. Rio 2016 spokesman and cool dad Mario Andrada didn’t pile on, saying, “They trained for four years, they competed under gigantic pressure, I understand that this issue is under investigation, but let’s give these kids a break. Sometimes you take actions that you take to regret. They are magnificent athletes, Lochte is one of the best swimmers of all time. They had fun, they made a mistake, it’s part of life, life goes on, let’s go.”
Of course, Andrada was also asked about several people being held up at gunpoint during these Games, and he said, “I think that when you said several at gunpoint, we didn’t have several reports at gunpoint, we had some.”
Some in Rio are sensitive about the crime issue here, and there was an angry crowd outside the police station, but then, a British and an Australian athlete were robbed the other night, and nobody seems to care. Meanwhile, Lochte and Feigen were not charged with filing a false report yet, and apparently are standing by the story. What a mess.
So, what have we learned? One, don’t lie to your mom. Two, don’t lie to the cops. Three, don’t lie to NBC. And four, do not entrust Ryan Lochte with a cover story. It will not end well, kids. Jeah.
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All this Karma coming back to the States for saying Brazilian police was corrupt/ paid off etc. 