RIO DE JANEIRO _ "What Would Ryan Lochte Do?" the Olympic swimming champion's reality show on E!, was cancelled after just five weeks and eight episodes in May 2013.
Looking back, it's hard to believe that the program didn't reach "Hill Street Blues" status. I mean Lochte's "I always pee in the pool, doesn't everyone?" line should have been this generation's "Let's be careful out there."
At least we now know the answer to the series episode titled "What Would Ryan Lochte Do ... if He Got Plastered?"
He'd lie.
Or at least that's what Rio police are now saying.
The biggest scandal of an Olympic Games with no shortage of controversy has not been about doping or polluted waters, but about exactly what happened or didn't happen to Lochte and three U.S. swimming teammates early Sunday morning when they said they were robbed at gunpoint after a night of partying.
After five days of intrigue that have finally made Lochte the ultimate global reality TV sensation, the chief of Rio's civil police said the 12-time Olympic medalist and his teammates could face charges of vandalism and filing a false police report.
"In theory they could be held responsible, by they I mean one or two or all four of them," chief Fernando Veloso said during a news conference Thursday.
Police officials said Lochte and Jimmy Feigen, another gold medalist, could be indicted as early as this week.
Having sorted through Lochte and his teammates' ever-changing stories, interviewed employees and security guards at a Rio gas station and reviewed security footage at the station and the Olympic Village, the police have essentially concluded this:
Lochte and his pals went Keith Moon on a gas station restroom, then told police, the U.S. Olympic Committee and, this is really serious, Matt Lauer, they were held up by a Rio version of the James-Younger gang.
"No robbery was committed against these athletes," Veloso said. "They were not victims of the crimes they claimed."
In other words, they lied.
Told a gold-medal whopper.
At least what has been dubbed "Lochtegate," has revived his career on the small screen. The platinum-haired swimmer has been on the tube more than Usain Bolt in recent days.
There's Lochte and U.S. swimming teammates Feigen, Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger on security "CAM 26" being marched by an employee out of a Shell Station bathroom not far from the Olympic Park and Olympic Village at 6:07 a.m. Sunday. Lochte and the others initially told police and U.S. Olympic Committee they were returning from a party at France House when their taxi was pulled over and they were robbed at gunpoint by four men posing as armed police.
There's the Shell Station Four on an Olympic Village surveillance video shortly before 7 a.m. Sunday that shows them clowning their way through security at the Village. Lochte, apparently so traumatized by being the latest victim of Rio's notorious violent street crime, is seen jokingly hitting a teammate on the head with his Olympic credential.
There's Lochte on Copacabana sticking to his story with NBC's Billy Bush. And there's Ryan changing his story with Lauer. Instead of getting pulled over, the four were approached by the gunmen when their cab driver wouldn't leave the gas station, Lochte said. Lauer subsequently tried to spin Lochte's rolled back version as merely a case of "hyperbole."
Brazilian authorities had a different take on Lochte's alternate reality.
According to Veloso and Brazilian authorities, the group vandalized the station's rest room, breaking a mirror and soap holder. A gas station employee told Reuters that the swimmers also tore down an advertising sign as they urinated on a wall.
Surveillance video showed that after an employee walked the group out of the restroom they were approached by two other employees. The swimmers then tried to get into a cab that wasn't their taxi before climbing into a second cab. That cab was prevented from leaving when it was approached by a security guard. Veloso said the guard pulled a gun because one of the swimmers was acting erratically. The police chief said the guard acted appropriately.
"From the moment the gun was pulled out, they calmed down," Veloso said. "Once they were calm, the gun was lowered."
Eventually one of the swimmers paid a station employee approximately $50 in Brazilian and U.S. currency and the group finally left but before police arrived, police said.
It was the Olympic Village video that led Rio Judge Keyla Blank on Wednesday to order police to confiscate Lochte and Feigen's passports and question them about alleged discrepancies in their versions of what happened.
"They arrived (at the Village) with their psychological and physical integrity unshaken," Blank wrote in the ruling.
Within hours of the judge's ruling, Conger and Bentz were being removed from an American Airlines flight bound for Houston and detained by authorities Wednesday night. The pair was released and interviewed further by police Thursday. Feigen was detained earlier Wednesday and continued speaking with authorities Thursday.
As for Lochte?
What would Ryan Lochte Do ... if He Got Caught in a Lie at the Olympics?"
He'd bail.
With his story beginning to unravel, Lochte high-tailed it out of Rio and flew back to the U.S. on Monday, leaving the rest of the Shell Station Four, the USOC and Los Angeles 2024 officials to deal with the mess.
Make no mistake, Lochtegate is bad news for Los Angeles' bid to host a third Olympic Games in 2024. The USOC has done a commendable job in recent years in repairing frayed relations with the IOC. The USOC has drilled American athletes on saying only nice things about Rio and the Olympics. USOC and LA 2024 officials have also stuck to their talking points, insisting everything is just great in Brazil. Really.
But Lochtegate only reinforces the Ugly American image for IOC members looking to vote for a Paris bid that, at least so far, is inferior on paper. The good news is the IOC vote on the 2024 host city is not until Sept. 15, 2017, time enough for the USOC and IOC to repair some of the damage. The vote is also months before the U.S. men's hockey team will have any chance to destroy their Olympic Village dorm rooms at the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang.
Not that the scandal doesn't have its winners. IOC president Thomas Bach and Hope Solo, the U.S. goalkeeper and ego-tripper, are now left to fight over the silver and bronze medal for who has been the Rio Games' biggest jerk. While Solo apparently didn't get the USOC memo, when it comes to Rio's financially and morally bankrupt Games, Bach is no more tuned into reality than Lochte.
And it turns out the controversy isn't even all bad for Lochte.
Something called the Esquire Network has announced it is running a "What Would Ryan Lochte Do?" marathon on Friday.
