Blame It On Rio

[Big RR]

[Lord Jim]

Well everything is buzzing with Lochte's "apology" now, which could have been written by either presidential campaign

That's about the size of it...

He decided to go with the "Modified limited hang-out route"...

And then even have the gall to continue to try to play the victim:

Ryan Lochte’s apology is clear: He doesn’t realize what he has done wrong

RIO DE JANEIRO — Let’s say you’re a guest in someone’s home. You and your friends are invited to a dinner at which the hosts, though cash-strapped, do their level best to put out a nice spread and show you hospitality. You over-serve yourself on their liquor, stagger around drunk and tear a picture off the wall, then unzip your fly and urinate in their bushes. The morning after, the best you can muster to your hosts is some vague, mumbled regret for being a “distraction” from the party.

Really?

Here’s a new slogan for the U.S. Olympic Committee: “Leading the medal chart but dead last in apologies.” Ryan Lochte still doesn’t get it. His so-called apology was a lame, crisis-crafted statement that showed zero sincerity and no awareness of his affront to Brazil and, if anything, only added to the insult by continuing to suggest he’s somehow this country’s victim.

“I want to apologize for my behavior last weekend — for not being more careful and candid in how I described the events of that early morning,” he parsed, via Instagram.

Hey, we can all be careless with our words. Which of us hasn’t falsely suggested we had a gun pressed to our foreheads?

“It’s traumatic to be out late with your friends in a foreign country — with a language barrier — and have a stranger point a gun at you and demand money to let you leave,” he continued.

True, it must be terrifying for a 32-year-old with more than a decade of international travel experience to party until almost 6 a.m. at Club France and then not be able to find a conveniently open bathroom stall at a gas station.

The worst part of this is that Lochte’s tone comes straight from the American top. Oh, USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun issued his own well-meaning apology, and so did USA Swimming Executive Director Chuck Wielgus. But they, like Lochte, seem to think his ultimate offense was stealing attention from other Olympians.

“We apologize to our hosts in Rio and the people of Brazil for this distracting ordeal in the midst of what should rightly be a celebration of excellence,” Blackmun said.

Wielgus said: “The last five days have been difficult for our USA Swimming and United States Olympic families. . . . We do not condone the lapse in judgment and conduct that led us to this point. That this is drawing attention away from Team USA’s incredible accomplishments in the water and by other athletes across the Olympic Games is upsetting.”

None of them gets it. None of them gets why, at last count, around 1.8 million Brazilian people had gone on Rio2016’s Twitter account to register their outrage against Lochte and his junior swim club pals.

“It’s clear the Brazilian population felt humiliated,” Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada said.

Maybe this will help: Imagine if Lochte was in Chicago or Cleveland or Detroit and concocted a vague story about being jacked by guys in hoodies. Would Americans be angry? Would they feel it was more than just a “distraction” and a “lapse?”


The Brazil police have released video from that pit stop early Sunday morning, and witnesses and lawyers for fellow USA swimmers Jack Conger, Gunnar Bentz and James Feigen have helped complete the picture of “events,” as well as non-events. Lochte apparently made up out of thin air, for NBC’s benefit, an account of bandits posing as police pulling over their taxi.

He left out the part about the four being drunk, punching a sign and damaging a door, peeing on the walls and bushes of the station and drawing the ire of armed security guards. He also neglected to mention that a local man tried to help the swimmers by translating and that they pleaded with the guards not to call the police.

Lochte made a convenient self-promotional vehicle out of a city tortured by crime and poverty. There were nearly 11,000 street robberies here in June. The unemployment rate is 11 percent and expected to rise to 12 percent by next year. The Brazilian minimum wage amounts to $228 a month. It should not need to be stated that the gas station was someone’s business, someone’s wherewithal.

Lochte created a needless problem for a strung-out police force with pay issues, short supplies and the overwhelming task of trying to secure Rio during a Summer Olympics. They had to chase his bogusness for four days.

And his colleagues let him do it; they didn’t open their mouths to correct him, though they apparently knew instantly that what he told NBC was “a lie.” Feigen and Conger had yet to break their silence or issue their own apologies (Bentz issued a statement late Friday). Conger and Bentz skulked on a flight home and then hustled through a Miami airport without a word.

The reason they all thought they could get away with it? It was just a little Brazilian gas station. Who could possibly care about that? Who would ever notice?

“They thought this would be forgotten,” said Sergio Riera, the lawyer who got Bentz and Conger released. “They did not think it would have a more serious consequence.”

Here is what is missing from Lochte’s apology. Any sign of manners. Any sign of humility. Any sign of real regret. Any sense of where he had spent the past two weeks. And that is truly sorry.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/o ... story.html

I knew almost nothing about Mr. Lochte prior to this, but now I'm convinced that he is an ill mannered, self-entitled, repulsive oaf...

[Lord Jim]

This should help give the Brazilians a much needed morale boost:

Olympics: Brazil beats Germany on penalties to win football gold

Rio de Janeiro (CNN)In the center circle, his teammates knelt in prayer, pleading for divine intervention.
All around him, 70,000 Brazilians inside the vast Maracana Stadium chanted his name, expecting -- no, demanding -- their nation's biggest soccer star deliver a historic success at Rio 2016.

Neymar paused, gathering his thoughts as he stuttered towards the ball, almost grinding to a halt before stroking his penalty kick high to the left of Germany's goalkeeper Timo Horn.

As the net rippled, Brazil celebrated. It had won Olympic soccer gold for the first time in its history.
A night of deafening noise and frantic play inside Rio's iconic arena ended in triumph for the host nation, as a penalty shootout separated the sides after Saturday's final finished 1-1 following extra time.

For Brazil, this was a cathartic success. This was a landmark victory over a country that had inflicted an humiliating 7-1 defeat on it two years ago, in the semifinal of its own World Cup.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/20/football/ ... -football/

[kmccune]

Lot of ex-pat Germans there anyway,right ?

[RayThom]

Ryan Lochte’s apology is clear: He doesn’t realize what he has done wrong

And today's clarification from the Olympics well known smart-ass, the best oxymoron and/or redundancy to date:
Ryan Lochte: 'I over-exaggerated' Olympics robbery story.
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/20/sport ... ry-future/

Lochte has the intelligence and understanding of a five year old. I'm afraid he's been in the water too long and needs to dry out.

[MajGenl.Meade]

He's a vacuum at math as well....

He's "over" exaggerated (apparently it's the quantity of exaggeration that counts)

He's 110% sorry for having experienced a robbery, or an extortion attempt or him paying for damages (whichever way one wants to look at it)


And this chap - the one who tried to explain it all away as youthful high jinks, poor swimmers - has trimmed his own sails.
“It’s clear the Brazilian population felt humiliated,” Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada said.

[oldr_n_wsr]

I knew almost nothing about Mr. Lochte prior to this, but now I'm convinced that he is an ill mannered, self-entitled, repulsive oaf...

Selfish and self centered, add alcohol and you get what I am.
He may or may not have a drinking problem, but he has the alcoholic mindset.
Time will tell.

[Bicycle Bill]

Well, the circus is over.

The IOC has had one last big extravaganza, then snuffed the flame, folded up its flags and tents, and gone back into obscurity until 2020 when they do it all again in Tokyo (well, maybe a smaller version of the ballyhoo in PyeongChang in 2018).

And now that the eyes of the world are off of it, Rio can sink back into the cesspool that it was before the Big Show came to town.  Five will get you ten that many of the venues and facilities of the past couple of weeks — like the Athletes' Village — will be unrecognizable from the slums they supplanted inside of a year.

-"BB"-

[Gob]

Four major sponsors of Ryan Lochte walked away from the disgraced U.S. swimmer on Monday.
Speedo, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Gentle Hair Removal and mattress maker Airweave all said they would be cutting ties with Lochte after the swimmer admitted to lying about being robbed at gunpoint while in Rio.
"While we have enjoyed a winning relationship with Ryan for over a decade and he has been an important member of the Speedo team, we cannot condone behavior that is counter to the values this brand has long stood for," Speedo said in its statement. "We appreciate his many achievements and hope he moves forward and learns from this experience."
Ralph Lauren said it had signed Lochte to an endorsement deal specifically for the 2016 Games and the company will not be renewing the contract. The company, which early Monday still had a photo of Lochte wearing an Olympic medal on its Twitter home page, has since taken that image down.
Likewise, Airweave -- which provided mattresses for Team USA in Rio -- said its agreement with Lochte was "in support of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games" and the company has decided to end the partnership.
But Lochte's photos were still all over the website of Gentle Hair Removal, which made Lochte a figurehead of their advertising campaigns since signing the athlete in April. Lochte appeared in a promotional video for Gentle Hair Removal, in which he said the service "was the best thing that's ever happened. I don't have to worry about shaving anymore."

They've hit him where it hurts, in the wallet.

[Guinevere]

Good for Speedo and the others for standing up when the USOC/IOC just shrugged it all off.

I use Speedo in the pool and I will make sure to continue to do so.

[Lord Jim]

America's idiot sea cow..

[MajGenl.Meade]

Good job too.... if Speedo hadn't dropped Lochte I was seriously considering dropping my Speedo

[rubato]

The downside of the US overemphasis on sports is that we create this kind of delayed adolescent who has not developed an adult sense of morality.

Historically it has been less true on the women's side because most of them knew that they needed to find a career after sports. There are a few Eric Heiden's who move on to a real adult career but even more stay stuck in the never-land of sports where nothing is quite real (Joe Pa's amorality while a respected 'leader')


yrs,
rubato

[MajGenl.Meade]

Sadly, if he's not mentally challenged (and in the wrong Olympics), then he's an amazingly uneducated, inarticulate, thick-as-a-brick product of the generation that believes "I mean duh like like it's like whoah dude!" is communication.

[RayThom]

The Doctor Is "IN."

My diagnosis is chronic chlorine poisoning. One of the symptoms of chlorine toxicity is a severe change in acid level of the blood which can lead to damage in all of the body organs. If it can be proven that Lochte does, indeed, have a brain I conclude that it may very well have been one of the organs affected. A comprehensive metabolic panel would be needed to verify my suspicions, however.

Dr. Moe has spoken.

[dales]

.... I was seriously considering dropping my Speedo

[Bicycle Bill]

Good job too.... if Speedo hadn't dropped Lochte I was seriously considering dropping my Speedo

-"BB"-

[Jarlaxle]

No pic, Bill.

This may be A GOOD thing...

[Lord Jim]

Good job too.... if Speedo hadn't dropped Lochte I was seriously considering dropping my Speedo

[MajGenl.Meade]

Good job too.... if Speedo hadn't dropped Lochte I was seriously considering dropping my Speedo

-"BB"-