Daedalus hit upon a bold scheme. While Icarus lounged lazily about the prison, Daedalus put himself to work on threading bird feathers together and binding them with wax. His plan was to fashion two pairs of wings, one for himself and one for his son, and escape through their prison's window. From there, they would launch themselves from the island's highest peak and fly away to freedom - a novel idea, but one that required patience and resolve.
When the wax had finally hardened, Daedalus explained to Icarus that they could wear their wings to freedom, but they had to steer clear of Apollo's rays. "Follow me and do as I do. Do not go too near the sun or too close to the sea. Steer a middle course and our freedom will be assured."
Icarus promised to obey. He followed his father's advice to the letter, to a point. When the day finally came for them to flee, at dawn they jumped out of the window (there was no need for bars or guards, for there was no-where to run). Climbing the highest peak, Daedalus and Icarus took off and soared effortlessly above the island. They flew for many miles, staying as close to each other as possible.
Soon, the clouds began to part and a magnificently golden sphere appeared in the sky above. Icarus forgot everything his father had taught him and, feeling stronger than ever and free as an eagle after years of confinement, soared ever closer to disaster. On and on Icarus flew, paying little regard to his wings, whose wax binding began to melt away like lard from pig fat.
Distracted by the sights and sounds of gulls and terns, Daedalus looked to see if Icarus was beside him. Not seeing the boy, Daedalus cried out in alarm: "Icarus! Icarus! Where are you?" In desperation, he flew back to where his son had been, whereupon he spotted some loose feathers bobbing in the water. It was all that remained of the impetuous Icarus. Unaware of his surroundings, and caring not a whit for what his father had warned him about, young Icarus had plunged into the sea and perished.
The Truth and Nothing But the TruthWhen the fatuousness of reality-TV life begins to dictate the course of one's real-life experiences, you know you're in big trouble. And, boy, did Ryan Lochte find himself in a heap of difficulties - up to his swimmer's ears in them - when the truth of what occurred at that Rio de Janeiro filling station ultimately unfolded.
It did not trickle out in digestible dribs and drabs but rather gushed forth in continuous waves, a torrent of negative publicity and nonstop coverage that nearly drowned the eleven-time Olympic medal winner in a sea of recriminations.
"People wanted a reason to hate me," Ryan griped to Allison Glock, a senior writer for ESPN Magazine, nearly a year from the time when the incident took place. "After Rio, I was probably the most hated person in the world. There were a couple of points where I was crying, thinking, 'If I go to bed and never wake up, fine.' I was about to hang up my entire life." (You will excuse me for having to point out the obvious, but in this context Ryan's poor choice of the words "hang up" may not have been ideal.)
Nevertheless, according to that same ESPN Magazine article ("Do You Really Still Hate Ryan Lochte?"), surveillance video from the scene in question revealed a different take on the matter as originally reported. The story went that Lochte and his swimming pals had asked the taxi driver to pull into the nearest filling station so they could make use of the station's facilities. One report emphasized that there was no access to the men's room; as an alternative, the drunken foursome urinated on the gas station's walls, or, in ESPN's account, they went about "[relieving] themselves in a filling station hedge." In addition to which, his teammates later claimed to police that Lochte "also pulled a framed advertisement to the ground" and vandalized it.
To hear Lochte tell it, the filling station's security guards arrived on the scene with guns drawn. The video, alluded to in Ms. Glock's piece, "showed security guards demanding money in payment for the damage [the swimmers had caused] before letting them depart in their cab. The men paid [the money] and returned to the Olympic Village, where the incident would have been quickly forgotten had Lochte not exaggerated the retelling to his mom, who in turn shared with the media that her superstar son had been robbed at gunpoint." Ryan repeated the allegations to the Today Show 's Billy Bush.
Incidentally, it was determined that the swimmers had paid $100 Brazilian reais (or approximately US $30) in damages and offered an additional US $20 to each of the security guards.
By Wednesday, August 17, when doubts began to surface over the initial robbery claims (which included an undisclosed altercation with one of the guards), the story started to unravel. By that time, Lochte had departed for the U.S., leaving his swimming buddies behind to wade, up to their necks, in the fallout.
Incensed by the objectionable nature of the allegations, the Brazilian police sought answers to their queries. They pulled Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger from their flight to face interrogation. Their passports were confiscated as well. The swimmers talked to police on Thursday, August 18, and, satisfied with what they had to say, were subsequently "whisked through airport security and [put] on a plane that night," as reported by the Associated Press and corresponding news outlets. The fourth swimmer, Jimmy Feigen, followed them on Friday night, "but only after reaching a deal with a judge to make a US $10,800 payment," a symbolic gesture intended as a charitable contribution.
"I definitely had too much to drink that night," Ryan fessed up in a televised interview with NBC's Matt Lauer that aired the following Saturday night, "and I was very intoxicated." He admitted that paying for the damage was a way of "striking a deal" to avoid embarrassment over his "dumb behavior." "We just wanted to get out of there," Lochte persisted. "That's why I'm taking full responsibility for it, because I over-exaggerated the story. If I had never done that, we wouldn't be in this mess."
His late-in-the-game admission carried little weight with Rio's humorless police officials, who charged the swimmer in late August 2016 with filing a false robbery report (punishable under Brazilian law by a maximum penalty of up to eighteen months in prison).
Action and ReactionBrazilians' reaction to the veracity (or not) of Ryan's cause célèbre reflected a long-standing view that white-collar (or upper-class) crimes - the sort that involve public officials, TV and sports personalities, and/or the super-rich - are treated differently by the media than are blue-collar (or lower-class) crimes. Some Brazilians took the rolling disclosures in stride; many expressed dismay that four American athletes had been "mugged" on the mean streets of Rio, only to have lied about it in retrospect; while others sneered indignantly at the incident as typical of the favorable treatment accorded foreigners, as opposed to what their fellow citizens go through on a daily basis.
Brian Winter, Latin American expert at the Council of the Americas research center in Washington, D.C., in an interview with BBC Brazil, raised the issue that "in serious countries, you can't lie to the police and get away with it." Alternatively, columnist Nancy Armor of USA Today, while at first insisting that the "truthfulness of Lochte's story was 'irrelevant,' " took the Rio police to task "even after the swimmers [admitted] that they [had] lied and apologized ... [The] Brazilian police missed the boat by treating the false report as a 'capital offense.' If only the police had cared as much about the evil done every day against their own citizens ..." If only!
BBC News columnist Tim Vickery argued, too, that "real criminality" in Rio should be kept front and center. "It's for this reason that exaggerated coverage of this subject is preferable to one that tends to minimize the dangers. The main victims of violence in Rio are its citizens. The rich are more likely to protect themselves in their closed condominiums and private living quarters. Those who suffer the most are everyday folks."
"Here Come da Judge!"A fascinating sidebar to the gas station goings-on came from the presiding magistrate involved in the proceedings, Judge Keyla Blank de Cnop, of the Juizado Especial do Torcedor e Grandes Eventos (Special Court of Fan Support and Major Events). Interviewed by Gerardo Lissardy for BBC World in Rio, Judge Keyla sensed that Lochte and his team members' account of the "crime" did not hold up to scrutiny or to the logic of the situation.
"I started reading about the case out of curiosity," Judge Keyla posited. "The way Lochte described the mugger caught my eye. Because it seemed very similar to what American screenwriters think of South American thugs: a tall, strongly built, bearded man, hair cut in the military style. And I thought, 'This is a long way from our street robber, who often has other physical characteristics.
"The (supposed) robberies also caught my attention because in Rio, if you are mugged, the first thing the bad guys want is your cell phone. And I figured, 'American swimmers have nothing less than state-of-the-art iPhones. Why would the burglars take only the money?' It's not real; no one would ever take the money and leave the cell phone, the watch, expensive clothes.
"Comparing Lochte and the (swimmer) James Feigen's statements, I realized there were other contradictions: one said that there was only one bandit, another that there were several bandits and only one carried a weapon. I called the prosecutor, we examined the case, and he said, 'I agree with you, there's something fishy here.'
"Another thing that caught my attention was the fact that three of [the swimmers] had been lying on the ground but that Lochte had refused [to do so] and the thug put a gun to his head. In Rio, if a bandit tells you to lie down, you lie down, because if you don't obey, he'll open fire. It's no joke. So I said, 'It's not possible, no one refuses to comply with an order [to lie down] with a gun pointed at your head."
Judge Keyla continued to poke holes in Lochte and his teammates' arguments. "When I saw the images from the Olympic Village, I noticed that one of [the swimmers] was wearing white pants, which had no dirt stains. Anyone who lies down on the asphalt with white pants will leave a mark." Apropos of these findings, Her Honor ordered that the two swimmers, Conger and Bentz, be detained and their passports confiscated until the matter was cleared up. "There was never a question of demanding their arrest, just the withholding of their passports to prevent them from leaving the country. Considering the level of the athletes in question, it was advisable to alert the Federal Police who have jurisdiction over foreigners departing for the airport."
At that, the magistrate grew reflective. "Well, then, the government has invested heavily in the Olympics, in the areas near the Olympic parks, but the reality that is Rio de Janeiro is not unknown, and the violence is grave and serious. Do not kid yourself. That's why [their description] sounded to me like a script out of a Hollywood movie."
Judge Keyla Blank de Cnop summarized her case in the methodical and measured tone to be expected from a magistrate responsible for maintaining order in the midst of constant chaos. "Brazilian justice is firm, solid, serious, one of the pillars of the nation," she insisted unequivocally, "and it's for treating everyone equally that all this has taken place." (Within the context of this account, this last assertion is surely debatable.)
"Seizing Olympic medalists' passports is no easy matter," Keyla concluded. "These are heroes, but an athlete who comes to another country to participate in the Olympics serves as an example to the world and cannot play around that way. They're not in their home. They must be subject to the rules. I think [the swimmers] thought they were in a country where they could do anything they want, and that's not so. They thought they could play around with our institutions, with the police. If it's not so in the United States, why would it be like that here? Now people are going to think seriously before they come here and do something wrong."
Let's Face FactsWhen faced with having done something wrong, what would Ryan Lochte do? He would lie, of course, which initiated a brief period of "fake news" before the term had come into regular use. Instead of accepting the consequences of his or his teammates' actions, Lochte weaseled out of the situation by concocting a fanciful yarn about a robbery that never took place.
Some say it was to protect one of their own from staying out past their curfew. Perhaps Ryan lacked the courage to tell his mom what a naughty boy he had been. Perhaps he found it impossible to distinguish fact from fantasy (or farce, in this case). Or perhaps his mind was clogged with too much to drink, as he later disclosed. Whatever his reasons were, Lochte got caught with his swimming trunks down. He had flown too close to the carioca sun and crashed into Guanabara Bay. He climbed the highest peak in Rio, only to fall flat on his face on one of those mosaic-laden streets.
Within days of his arrival in the U.S., Ryan had lost most of his sponsors (to include Speedo USA and Ralph Lauren cosmetics). He was suspended for ten months following the incident and had to forfeit US $100,000 in Olympic bonus money; as further punishment, he was banned from participation in the 2017 national and world championships.
Ban or no ban, on August 21 the Rio 2016 closing ceremony went on as scheduled without Lochte, or any of the other participants involved in the incident, in attendance. Acting as if one were still on a reality-TV show is no way for a talented athlete to go through life, particularly the sporting life. In that June 2017 ESPN Magazine article, sports writer Glock learned that Ryan wasn't exactly enamored of the reality show experience (now she tells us!). "They had me drinking nonstop. Eight in the morning, a drink in my hand. I'm like, my liver is about to fail. And anything I said, [the producers would] say, 'All right, let's do this scene over, and Ryan, say it like this.' " Say it ain't so!
On July 14, 2017, a Brazilian Appellate Court dismissed the criminal case against him, concluding that Lochte had not broken the law in exaggerating the details of the filling station incident. The Appeals Court had reversed the original decision on a technicality, ruling that the law was not broken because the police in Rio had initiated the investigation, not Lochte. Since he wasn't the one who reported the alleged crime, no harm had been done (except to someone's self-worth). Whatever Lochte had said in those NBC interviews with Billy Bush and Matt Lauer did not constitute, in their eyes, a false report. Additionally, USA Today insisted they found no evidence of vandalism, as suspected by the police, with the exception of the poster being thrown to the ground.
"You learn from your mistakes," Ryan Lochte divulged to Allison Glock. "Am I going to be perfect? No."
Perfection, like nirvana, is an ideal, not a fact. To work toward perfection, to strive for it, to achieve it, is the goal of every Olympic athlete, be they American, Brazilian, or what have you. However you may look at it, Lochte's so-called "crime" was committed not to the Brazilian people but to himself.
To compensate for the offense and his admittedly "dumb behavior," on August 20, 2016, the day before the closing ceremony, Lochte taped (in Manhattan) a rambling and mildly impecunious interview with TV-Globo's New York correspondent Felipe Santana. It was part of a purported "apology tour" and broadcast simultaneously in Brazil, on the nightly news program Jornal Nacional, and, in a separate interview, in the U.S. with Matt Lauer on NBC.
"That was my fault. Brazil doesn't deserve that. You guys put on [an] amazing Olympics. Everyone in Brazil, the people, the fans, everyone that put on the Brazil Olympics, it was amazing and you guys didn't deserve that kind of publicity. And it was my immaturity that caused that. And that's why I'm saying, that's why I'm really sorry about that. It was my fault and I take full responsibility for it. I just want the people of Brazil to know how truly sorry I am, because I'm embarrassed, I'm embarrassed for myself, for my family, for my country. It was ... I was highly intoxicated[1] ... I'm human, I made a mistake, and one thing I did learn from it, that this will never happen again."
Apology accepted.
Dance to the MusicOn September 13, 2016, not a month after Rio 2016 had wrapped up and the Olympic flame had been doused, Ryan Lochte found himself mired in another controversy as a contestant on the popular ABC-TV program Dancing With the Stars, the hallowed platform for has-beens and makeover artists.
Seeking to repair his tarnished Olympian image, Ryan and his dance partner, Cheryl Burke, started the competition off with a foxtrot. Just as the pair was receiving talent judge Carrie Ann Inaba's verdict, two intruders rushed up to the stage in protest over Lochte's appearance. They each wore T-shirts emblazoned with a red circle and a slash across the swimmer's name. One of the protesters shouted out that Ryan was "a liar."
None of the ensuing brouhaha was broadcast to viewers, since the TV station had gone to a commercial break. However, cameras captured the incident whereby one of the protesters was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed by security. When the show returned from the break, Dancing With the Stars host Tom Bergeron addressed the incident indirectly. He thanked the security team for their quick action and asked Lochte how he was feeling.
"I'm a little hurt," Ryan responded. "You know, at that moment, I was really heartbroken. My heart just sunk. It felt like somebody just ripped it apart. I had to brush it off ... I came out here in front of millions. I did something that I did not know how to do - I don't know how to dance. And I gave it my all and I'm glad I did it and I'm glad I'm here."
Instead of a foxtrot, it would have been instructive for audiences to learn if Lochte could master the samba as well as he handled the freestyle.
In our opinion, the opportunity of a lifetime had been squandered. What BBC Worldwide Productions, the company that produced Dancing With the Stars, could have done instead was to pair Ryan Lochte off with another Olympic disrupter, the defrocked Irish priest Cornelius "Neil" Horan, the man who threw Brazilian marathoner Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima off his course in Athens 2004. Together, Horan and Lochte could have wowed North American TV viewers with an Irish jig or two. What a striking couple they would have made.
Normally, the moral to this drawn-out Olympic story would be: "Honesty is the best policy." As for myself, I'd prefer a more aptly worded one: "Birds of a feather flock and dance together."
Copyright © 2019 by Josmar F. Lopes[1] A year and three months later, Lochte announced that he was seeking treatment for a "destructive pattern" of alcohol abuse, something that had been going on for years, in accordance with his attorney, Jeff Ostrow's October 8, 2018 press release.
