RIO DE JANEIRO _ The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
So help me God, I know we're not there yet with the Ryan Lochte robbery saga. And that's a shame, because the second week of an otherwise great Summer Olympics is getting overshadowed while this story gets peeled like an onion.
The lawyers are involved now. And the diplomats. And the judges. And every official from the United States Olympic Committee you can think of. And a Brazilian police force that doesn't like the idea that one of the highest-profile American athletes and three of his USA Swimming teammates at the Olympics either 1) got robbed at gunpoint in Rio or 2) completely made up a story about being robbed to cover up something else.
The latest, according to several media reports: Brazilian police apparently think Lochte and friends made the whole thing up. Instead, a police source told the Associated Press, the real story was that the swimmers kicked down the outside door of a bathroom at a gas station and then had a rowdy confrontation with a security guard before providing the gas station some money to pay for repairing the door. Police plan an afternoon news briefing in Brazil.
No matter what, the optics are bad. Something's not right. No one got physically hurt except the Olympics themselves, which have received a large black eye. But some reputations are being seriously damaged _ especially Lochte's, if he fabricated the robbery story.
When I texted Lochte's mother, Ileana, on Sunday and asked what the deal was, she texted back about her son: "Not really sure what happened but he is OK and really that is all I care about."
