USA Swimming

Lochtegate: what is wrong with this picture?

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Something is seriously amiss in our cultural — indeed, our moral and ethical — landscape if Ryan Lochte’s next move turns out to be a starring turn on “Dancing with the Stars.”

The producers of DWTS must be themselves dancing with glee over this publicity coup. Everyone loves a train wreck. Who wouldn’t tune in?

Reports emerged Wednesday that Lochte would appear on the show. He was said to have struck a deal to appear on DWTS before Lochtegate — that is, his purported robbery tale and its twists and turns at the just-concluded Rio Games.

Ryan Lochte in Rio, before it all blew up // Getty Images

Everybody has a right to make a living and, goodness knows, Lochte may be in need of cash flow after four sponsors ditched him on Monday.

But that’s not the only interest that is crying out here to be served.

Indeed, here is the one that seems way more important than ratings. Heresy, some will say, but here goes:

How is it that a guy who “over-exaggerates,” to use his phrasing, gets to revel in a network-TV spotlight when he, whether intentionally or not, cut and run in the aftermath of whatever it is that happened at that Rio gas station, leaving his three much-younger teammates to fend for themselves with the Brazilian authorities while he, details of the story changing with different tellings, was already back in the States?

Lochte would hardly be the first to try the DWTS approach to redemption, as the Atlantic magazine underscored in a piece published Wednesday. The difference is that he is an Olympic athlete -- not a politician, or a politician's kid, or a celebrity chef.

Being an Olympic athlete -- in Lochte's case, a multiple Olympic champion -- brings with it a different set of responsibilities and sensibilities. Bristol Palin as role model? Be serious. Paula Deen? Get real. But Ryan Lochte, until Lochtegate, was role model to a lot of people.

That's why the likes of Apolo Ohno, Shawn Johnson, Nastia Liukin and Natalie Coughlin have been on the show. Those appearances showcased Olympic gold-medalist role models.

As a USA Today report makes clear, there are lots of sides to Lochtegate.

Even so, as anyone in middle or high school would reasonably ask:

How come Ryan Lochte gets to lie and he ran away and now he’s going to be on "Dancing with the Stars"?

Don’t we teach our kids that there are consequences to behavior? That the important thing is to tell the truth? That lying about it afterward is worse than whatever it is that actually happened?

Perception is as important, if not more, than reality. The USA Today report makes plain that elements of what Lochte has said are, in fact, true. But that pales in comparison to the big picture — the impact on impressionable young people, especially with school starting up again, because that first reasonable school-kid question leads directly to the next, which is the core issue.

What kind of message does it send to America’s young people when Olympic athletes misbehave and then seemingly get rewarded for it?

In response to that rhetorical question, a rhetorical question:

Doesn’t that cut against every single nugget of accountability and responsibility we as adults say is important?

For all the he-said, he-said and the back-and-forth about what happened that night, some pieces are indisputable:

Lochte “over-exaggerated.”

He is 32 years old. He was out with three college kids. Way after midnight, when grown-ups know nothing good happens. If you are in your early or mid-20s, and a guy — supposedly a team leader — who is 32 says, let’s do x, and this is a guy who you grew up idolizing on YouTube and now you’re out partying with him, you’re going to say no?

The now-infamous Rio Shell station // Getty Images

By his own account, Lochte had been drinking. A lot. So much that when he gave his first account to Billy Bush, he says, he was still feeling it.

What’s especially disquieting about all this is that USA Swimming has long had a distinct culture of accountability and responsibility. Over the years, at any number of world championships and Olympic Games, the stand-up nature of America’s best swimmers has readily come to the fore when someone, say, makes a mistake on a relay — it’s one for all and all for one.

But that’s not in any sense what happened here. Where is Lochte’s accountability? Where was his responsibility to his younger teammates and, indeed, to the team itself?

Before any edition of a Games, every single U.S. athlete on an Olympic team, since the days of ski racer Bode Miller’s declaration at the 2006 Torino Winter Games that he got to “party and socialize at an Olympic level,” goes through what’s called an “ambassador” program.

The thrust is to remind American athletes that being on the Olympic team is a privilege but one that, because they are Americans, carries special responsibilities. Be humble, the U.S. Olympians are told. Most of all, be respectful in every regard when it comes to the host country.

Lochte has been through that program at least three times — 2008, 2012 and 2016. Or at least he should have been through it three times. What, did everything sound to him like Miss Othmar in the Charlie Brown cartoons? Wah wah wah? What?

A point of intrigue here is that Lochte had said in Rio, after he was done racing but before the whole thing erupted, that he was mentally, physically and emotionally worn out.  Maybe he would try to come back in four years to try for the Tokyo Olympics, he said, but for now he needed some time off.

One of his fundamental miscalculations is that he got going on that time off too soon.

Or is that really what he was thinking? In a June interview with Time, he said this:

“You can’t have girls in a guy’s room or guys in a girl’s room,” referring to U.S. rules in the athletes’ village. “No alcohol. You’re there to compete, you’re not there to party. So once swimming is all said and done, if you want to do those kind of things, you have to leave the village and go on your own.”

USA Swimming officials would be 100 percent right to assert that the best parts of their culture run deep.

At the same time, something is clearly amiss when this Lochte situation is directly traceable to alcohol; Michael Phelps was arrested twice on suspicion of DUI before getting himself to rehab; and the Brock Turner sexual assault case at Stanford was tied to alcohol consumption.

Alcohol and a party culture have for years been part of the big-time swim scene, too. Lochte has long been a fixture. A quick Google search will prove the point — just try “Ryan Lochte” and “Las Vegas” and see what turns up.

The alcohol thing is by no means any sort of excuse for anyone’s behavior. It may be offered as explanation. But that absolutely does not elevate it to excuse.

A disclaimer here:

None of this is fun to write. I have known Ryan Lochte for many years. He has always been kind, gracious and courteous to everyone he has met at and around USA Swimming affairs.

He is not anywhere near as dumb as most people believe. That’s his public persona.

Moreover, he has for years been the face of USA Swimming in any number of promotional campaigns. That is because — in addition to being ripped and good looking, obvious positives when you’re doing an ad campaign — he can be, genuinely, a really good guy.

But what Lochte did in Rio was the opposite of what really good guys do.

For one, he robbed any number of worthy athletes of their Olympic spotlight. That’s inexcusable, moments lost forever in time. As Scott Blackmun, the USOC chief executive put it in a news conference as the Games were winding down, referring to Lochte and the three other swimmers, “They let down our athletes. They let down Americans.

“And they really let down our hosts in Rio who did such a wonderful job, and we feel very badly about that.”

Lochte’s conduct has also set in motion any number of inquiries.

One, by the International Olympic Committee, seems entirely out of line. This is not an IOC problem. If Ryan Lochte is their problem, then so are the two Mongolian wrestling coaches who stripped out of their clothes, one to his underwear, in protest of a controversial scoring decision. So, just to be even more obvious, is Patrick Hickey, the Irish member of the IOC’s policy-making executive board, arrested in Rio amid allegations of misconduct with Games tickets; he is being held in a maximum-security Rio prison while his case slowly moves along.

As far as eligibility goes, what to do with Lochte is appropriately a matter for the U.S. Olympic Committee; USA Swimming; and the world swimming body, which goes by the acronym FINA.

The starting baseline, clearly, is six months off. At the least.

Last year, USA Swimming suspended Phelps for six months and kept him away from that summer’s world championships.

US Soccer on Wednesday announced a six-month suspension from the women’s national team for Hope Solo — for being disrespectful in calling the Swedish team a “bunch of cowards” after a Rio loss, or as the federation put it, “conduct that is counter to the organization’s principles.” (So here apparently is something that Lochte and Solo could have in common besides being the leading contenders for the title of America's biggest jerk in Rio -- she was on DWTS, too.)

In Lochte’s case, how meaningful, really, would six months off be? Like zero. Next year’s world championships are almost a full year away.

Whatever the terms of the suspension, in addition Lochte needs to be ordered to do some sort of community service. Say, teaching kids to swim. Or picking up garbage on the side of the highway — which might help make clear to him the elements of privilege that he indisputably has put on display.

If he were smart, Lochte ought to get ahead of this story and get himself to rehab. Like Phelps was, he is at a crossroads: trying to figure out who he really is, and what his identity is, or ought to be, when he’s not swimming for Olympic medals.

If he does rehab and can stay clean and sober for a while, then maybe Lochte deserves a shot at something like "Dancing with the Stars."

Then the narrative changes. Then he becomes a redemption story.

Everyone — again, everyone — makes mistakes. And everyone — this includes Ryan Lochte — deserves a second chance.

What he doesn’t deserve, right now, is the chance to capitalize on bad behavior. That’s just wrong.

Free Michael Phelps

This space believes in making things simple and easy. So here it is: Michael Phelps should swim at the 2015 world championships in Kazan, Russia. USA Swimming suspended Phelps for six months in the aftermath of his drunk-driving incident in Maryland last September. That suspension has run, and he will open his 2015 season by swimming this week at a meet in Mesa, Arizona. In addition to that suspension, Phelps and USA Swimming agreed — and “agreed” is putting a spin on it — that he would not be on the U.S. team in Kazan. Now the time has come to fix that.

For every reason you can come up with to keep Phelps off the Kazan team, there are better reasons to send him.

First and foremost, there is this:

The American story is, and forever will be, one of redemption. This is who we are. This is the classic, everlasting story of our country.

In the United States of America, we get not only a second chance, but a third, a fourth, a fifth and more.

If anyone has earned that chance, it’s Michael Phelps.

Phelps is one of the great sports heroes of our time, an imperfect human being — we all are — who has won 22 Olympic medals, 18 of them gold, inspiring literally millions of boys and girls and grown-ups, too.

About this there can be no debate.

Our funny face pic yesterday at #theboysandgirlsclub What a blast!

A photo posted by Michael Phelps (@m_phelps00) on

Disclaimer: I co-wrote Phelps’ 2008 best-selling book. In writing this column, I have not shared even one word with him.

To recap how we got here, and why there must be reconsideration — not just for Phelps but for USA Swimming and even the U.S. Olympic Committee — that Phelps go to Russia:

On Sept. 30, 2014, Phelps was stopped by Maryland police going 84 in a 45 mph zone. His blood-alcohol level registered 0.14.

This was Phelps’ second DUI offense in 10 years.

For legal purposes, the first DUI, when Phelps was a teenager, was completely immaterial during the second case. For the record, he did 18 months probation. USA Swimming took no action.

In 2009, a few months after going 8-for-8 at the Beijing Games, Phelps, then 23, was photographed with his face in a bong. The picture created a major international stir. USA Swimming suspended him for three months.

Then came the arrest last September. Phelps was arrested amid the media frenzy ignited by the cases involving the NFL players Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson and, to a lesser extent, the soccer star Hope Solo, each enveloped in a domestic violence incident.

To be clear, is Phelps super-fortunate no one got hurt? Or worse? Yes, a thousand times over.

Now: was Phelps involved in a domestic violence case? No.

Was it thus apples to apples? No.

Was it his incredibly poor judgment to get behind the wheel of a car, impaired, when the harsh media spotlight had turned on high-profile athletes? Yes.

Was there thus pressure on USA Swimming and the USOC, especially given the intensity of the focus on the Rice and Peterson matters, in particular, to bring the hammer down on Phelps? Absolutely.

Was Phelps in any sort of position, given that intensity, to argue at the time — even though he and everyone else involved knew that the best thing for him was to go to treatment, which was where he was, in fact, headed — about any of the elements of the six-month plus Kazan deal? Hardly.

Was there, as this space pointed out at the time, a rush to judgment? You bet.

When can it be said that a rush to judgment ever proves positive?

Now that time has run:

Rice and the Baltimore Ravens have settled his grievance for $1.588 million, and Rice is eligible to play again in the NFL.

Peterson is eligible for reinstatement on Wednesday.

The domestic violence charges against Solo were dismissed in January. A few days later, she was back in the news in connection with a drunken driving incident involving her husband, ex-NFL player Jerramy Stevens, that led US Soccer to suspend her for 30 days.

At the Algarve Cup in Portugal in March, a key tune-up for this summer’s women’s World Cup, who was that making the incredible late-game save to preserve her 81st international shutout in leading the United States over France, 2-0, for the title? For sure — Solo.

To be clear, one of the reasons to see Phelps swim in Kazan is what would likely happen in the pool. Reports from swim insiders say Phelps is hugely motivated — he is said to be practicing the way he did in 2007 and 2008 — and there is perhaps no sight in sports like Phelps roaring down the pool in the back half of his races.

There is also this: the U.S. team needs Phelps if it has any hopes of winning the 400 freestyle relay the way it did in Beijing in 2008. That’s the race he watched — from the stands — with dismay at the 2013 world championships in Barcelona. You only get so many chances to practice this relay before Rio in 2016.

Beyond that, there is this:

In a weird way, the September DUI arrest may have been the best thing that ever happened to Phelps. It got him to treatment. It forced him to look, and hard, at who he is and what he is doing.

In the months since leaving treatment, he has gotten engaged. He has been a model citizen. Everyone who has been in contact with him has remarked about how he has grown up.

In London, and that was before all this, Phelps was a veteran team leader at the 2012 Games. Wouldn’t you want Phelps 2.0, and this kind of hard-won life experience, on your team in Kazan?

Having reviewed the USA Swimming selection criteria, it is abundantly plain that it would indeed be a complex process — a number of dominoes would need to fall in just the right way — to get Phelps on the Kazan team. But, as always, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Now for some real-life politics, because there are plenty of intersecting currents to factor into the dynamic as well:

USA Swimming and FINA, the international governing body for swimming, are currently not — shall we say — on the best of terms. There are a variety of reasons why, but for this conversation it’s enough to leave it at this: things are business-like.

And to not have Phelps in Russia? FINA is not happy to begin with. Now you throw in the prospect that the best American swimmer ever would not be at its marquee event?

Everyone knows, meanwhile, that the USOC wants to put forward a Summer Games bid for 2024.

Not everyone knows, however, that John Leonard, who is an influential U.S. swim coach, has for months now been leading a largely behind-the-scenes campaign aimed at reforming FINA.

FINA has opted not to respond in public to the Leonard campaign.

The point of bringing up Leonard’s campaign here is not to debate its merits. It’s to put it in a different context.

The president of FINA, Julio Cesar Maglione of Uruguay, was just this past weekend elected interim president of the Pan-American Sports Organization.

Maglione is a key and dependable ally of International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach’s.

Maglione is 79. Elected FINA president in 2009, he was re-elected in 2013. Now there is serious talk that he wants a third term; to do so would require a rules change.

Leonard’s campaign is wondering, among other things, how this can be.

The answer: it’s all part of a complex geopolitical strategy involving interests beyond Maglione with close ties to the IOC president. This strategy might take all of a presumed third Maglione third term to play out. Or just part of it. In that scenario, which leadership at USA Swimming understands full well already, U.S. influence at FINA's top levels might well be further considerably diminished.

This is no small matter. For revenue purposes, swimming is now what's called a Tier "A" sport in the Olympic movement, along with gymnastics and track and field -- in large measure because of the import of Phelps.

Leonard is doing what he justifiably feels is in the right.

In the meantime, the Leonard campaign is not doing a 2024 U.S. Olympic bid any favors — see above, FINA not happy with USA Swimming to begin with.

Moving on:

Understand always that Vladimir Putin made the first call to Bach when Bach was elected IOC president. These Kazan swim championships are a key element in Putin’s strategy to make Russia a world sports destination — along with Sochi 2014 and soccer’s 2018 World Cup.

To reiterate: to not have the biggest star in swimming at the biggest show in swimming? How in the world, come voting time for the 2024 bid, is that going to help the United States? Don’t fool yourselves. Russia is a big deal in the Olympic sphere and people have long memories when it comes time to vote.

Moving on once more:

Katie Ledecky, Missy Franklin and Ryan Lochte are awesome swimmers. But without Phelps, who in the United States is likely to watch a swim world championships — from Kazan or anywhere — on television?

Answer: virtually no one.

Need evidence? Lochte is, truly, a great guy. But there's a reason his reality-TV show was quickly canceled.

If Phelps doesn’t swim in Kazan, it’s a simple matter to look at the calendar and see he would have to swim instead at the U.S. nationals in San Antonio. They’re Aug. 6-10. The swim schedule in Kazan runs Aug. 2-9. Why the two events run simultaneously is a long, and separate, story.

A San Antonio nationals would feature Phelps, Allison Schmitt, Natalie Coughlin and dozens of others — apologies — recognizable mostly to their coaches and parents.

Phelps has for more than a dozen years now said his goal is to grow the sport of swimming. How would limiting him to San Antonio accomplish any of that?

That’s not just a rhetorical question.

It’s way better all around for leadership at USA Swimming to take a deep breath, work out the complexities of the selection process, acknowledge the obvious and get the guy who virtually by himself since 2000 has elevated swimming into the top tier in the Olympic scene back where he belongs.

With the best in the world.

USOC's snapshot of stability

Financial documents, it is often said, are boring. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

They provide a wealth of clues about the performance and direction of whatever entity is at issue.

What the U.S. Olympic Committee's annual tax filing, its Form 990, made public Wednesday, underscores -- yet again -- is that, under the direction of board chairman Larry Probst and chief executive Scott Blackmun, it has reversed years of chaos and infighting and traded that for security, stability, growth and zero turmoil.

In combination with the medals tallies from the Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 Games -- the U.S. teams won the overall counts at both Olympics, with 37 in 2010 and 104 in 2012 -- these are, in many ways, glory years for the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Almost totally.

Now comes the next step: the USOC is quietly moving to forge partnerships within the international Olympic movement. Probst is thought to be a candidate for IOC membership, perhaps as soon as this year; meanwhile, he and Blackmun have, since 2010, assiduously been at work at relationship-building, and the USOC is eyeing a bid for the Summer 2024 or Winter 2026 cycle, probably 2024.

All this is rooted in the comfort of the documents that underpin the USOC"s standing.

On the very first page: total revenues of $338.3 million, up from $140.7 million in 2011.  This wide discrepancy is normal, due to the receipt of broadcast revenues in a Games year.

Similarly, expenses were up from $185 million in 2011 to $247 million in 2012 (also, page 1).

Revenues thus exceeded expenses by $91 million.

The timing of the lump-sum broadcast pay-out for the Summer Games forces the the USOC to shelter cash reserves so that it can have sufficient operating cash for the remainder of the four-year Olympic cycle.

The apples-to-apples comparison for 2012 is 2008, the final year of the previous four-year cycle, which in Olympic terms is called a "quadrennium." USOC revenue in 2008: $280.6 million. At $338.3 million, 2012 revenue marked a 20.5 percent jump.

As a continued sign of the stability the USOC has shown since Probst took over as chairman of the board and Blackmun came on as chief executive, the report lists no severance payments -- that is, no former employees were "highly compensated."

Compare that to the 2010 Form 990, which featured three chief executives on the USOC payroll  -- Blackmun, who had been hired that year, along with former executives Jim Scherr and Stephanie Streeter.

Alan Ashley, the USOC"s chief of sport performance, got about a 10 percent raise over 2011 (page 8). Based on the 2012 team's performance in London -- who wants to question that?

Blackmun's compensation (page 7), breaks down this way: $461,923 salary (page 64), $231,750 bonus (page 64) and $35,664 retirement income (page 64). Then there's another column of deferred compensation -- a long-term performance bonus plus non-taxable retirement and health insurance benefits.

For those tempted to look only at the first column (page 7) next to Blackmun's name and see the number itself, which says, $729,337, there's this:

He made less in 2012 -- a Summer Olympic year -- than he did in 2011. His 2011 total: $742,367. He got paid a bigger bonus in 2011 is mostly why.

Then there's this for context and comparison:

According to a database published last month by USA Today, here is what various athletic directors around the United States make: Shawn Eichorst, Nebraska: $1.123 million. Barry Alvarez, Wisconsin, $1.143 million. Tom Jurich, Louisville, $1.401 million.

David Williams at Vanderbilt: $3.239 million.

By any measure in the real world, Blackmun is a bargain.

Meanwhile, USA Ski & Snowboard got $4.3 million in grants from the USOC; it earned 21 of the 37 Vancouver medals. At the 2013 alpine world championships, Ted Ligety won three gold medals; Mikaela Shiffrin won the world slalom title; Kikkan Randall is a cross-country medals threat; and more.

USA Swimming got $4.16 million; it won 31 medals in London.

USA Track & FIeld got $4.692 million. It won 29 medals in London.

This is the USOC strategy: to invest in sports likely to bring back results. Given the U.S. team's world-leading performance in London -- all those who want to argue that the swim and track teams did not measure up, line up on the left.