Thursday, August 18, 2016

Should Ryan Lochte and his cohorts be banned from all competition?

By now everyone has probably read all about the extremely embarrassing incident where four US swimmers - Gunnar Bentz , Jack Conger, James Feigen and Ryan Lochte - apparently lied to Brazilian police officials and their own US Olympic Committee about being mugged by thieves who had posed as policemen.

Turns out that the four of them had been out partying all night long, had been drunk, vandalized a gas station, and when armed security guards made them pay for the damage they'd done, they decided to concoct this story...for reasons which boggle the mind.

Now, it is beyond stupid that they would even think of doing this. How did these guys even think that they wouldn't be found out? That embarrassing the host country of the Olympics would be okay if it got them off the hook for their own stupid behaviors.

Perhaps in the United States these entitled athletes would have been able to walk away from a US gas station with no consequences for their actions. But did these four men not know anything about Rio de Janeiro?  Did they really think they could act like "ugly tourists" and get away with it?

Apparently they did. Kind of makes you wonder about their intelligence level, their common sense level, and their knowledge of the world, as well as the fact that actions have consequences.

So what should their punishment be? Should they be allowed to compete in swimming competitions ever again, even though they have been caught out in flat-out lies that could very well have caused an international incident?

If they were banned for life, as they should be IMHO, would they have the nerve to appeal - like so many entitled athletes in baseball, basketball and football, who so often are clearly in the wrong but nevertheless will insist that their Union defend their reprehensible actions do?

So much for these four men as role models. - it would certainly be interesting to see if they lose any endorsements they might have received after winning their medals. (Ryan Lochte is the only swimmer among them that I'd heard of, but apparently the other 3 were part of a gold medal relay team).

And is their behavior symptomatic of the behavior of all athletes, who have gone through their entire lives - once their athletic ability became known - being able to do whatever they wanted and get away with it because of their athletic ability (because they certainly don't seem to have any mental ability.)

And does anyone doubt that the four swimmers involved have been approached by a writer even now, wanting to write a book on them, their Olympics, and their spectacular fall from grace? I predict at least one and probably two books on this subject will be published and available at bookstores everywhere in about 3 months.

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