Lochte’s story and Rio police’s spin both farces of Olympic proportions

Let’s start with two things we know with absolute certainty:

1. Ryan Lochte is a 32-year-old U.S. swimmer who is not very worldly, underestimates the power of the truth and lies to his mother.
2. Brazil is a country that sees over 60,000 murders a year, is rife with other violent crimes and corruption and has a police force that is, at best, apathetic about “serving and protecting.”

What we don’t know for certain is whether or not what went down at that gas station in Rio de Janeiro was a robbery. A gun-waving security guard demands cash as reparation for a damaged door and sign, and holds the swimmers against their will until such reparation is paid?

In the United States, that’s a crime.

{mosads}Over the past week, we have all witnessed public relations campaigns, on the scale of another Kardashian wedding, put on by both Lochte and Brazilian authorities. We may never know why Lochte concocted a lie so monstrous it activated a typically narcoleptic Brazilian police force, but we do know the story was embellished and narcissistic enough to paint Lochte as its valiant protagonist: “the guy pulled out his gun, he cocked it, put it to my forehead and he said, ‘Get down,’ and I put my hands up, I was like ‘whatever.'”

There’s something prototypically millennial in Lochte’s attempt to turn what could have been, and perhaps was, a traumatic confrontation into an opportunity for image enhancement.

We may never understand why the capital city of Brazil has become a place dangerous enough that the U.S. State Department warns travelers that Rio “continues to experience high incidences of crime, including armed robberies,” and that “tourists are particularly vulnerable to street thefts and robberies in the evening and at night,” but we do know that in this particular case Rio authorities drew a line in the sand and refused to allow an entitled “ugly American” to fuel an already pervasive narrative that Rio’s police force has been incapable of keeping athletes safe.

This is, of course, not an unfounded narrative. There have been several high-profile crimes at these Olympic games, beginning with the Games’ security director being mugged outside Maracana Stadium immediately after the opening ceremony. An athlete from New Zealand was kidnapped by fake police and driven to ATMs. Two Australian coaches were robbed at knifepoint on Ipanema Beach. After a British athlete was robbed this week, British track and field officials advised its athletes against leaving the athletes’ village “given the current climate in Rio.”

But in the case of Lochte’s fable, a story that gained international attention, Brazilian authorities lined up to put on their own epic public relations campaign.

As noted in the Los Angeles Times:

“We don’t have anybody here with a clown nose,” said Fernando Veloso, head of Rio civil police, through an interpreter. “This is not a circus.” …

“The city of Rio had its name tainted by a very unreal and untruthful person,” said Veloso. “If you say Rio is a violent city, you know, metropolitan centers have violence in their daily lives, Rio has that, it’s true. The difference is how we face and how we overcome the violence we have here.”

As big a farce as Lochte’s tale of gallantry was, the farce Rio’s police force would have us believe is just as lofty. It is entirely counterintuitive that a city, which has seen violent crimes rise by 80 percent year on year, had the Lochte investigation sewn up lickety-split, like it was an hour episode of “CSI Rio.”

Between Ryan Lochte’s self-promoting fabrications, and Rio’s smackdown on American self-righteousness, we’ve all been had. Thirteen people have died and 40,000 homes have been damaged in catastrophic flooding in Louisiana, while we have obsessed over a story that has been nothing more than an attempt at brand enhancement.

And we’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

Spatola is a West Point graduate and former captain in the U.S. Army. He currently serves as a college basketball analyst for ESPN and is a host on SiriusXM radio.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.