The Ryan Lochte debacle proves one thing: if you screw up, man-up.
His drunken escapade might have been forgiven, had he just handled the whole situation differently. He could have apologized to the Rio gas station owners, quietly paid for damages, and fessed up that he f*cked up — royally.
We all know that everybody makes mistakes and does dumb things, especially when under the influence, and we all remember times, particularly in our younger years, when we behaved badly; so forgiving this 12-time Olympic medalist for his asinine, drunken behavior would have come easy for most of us, if he’d only taken full-responsibility for his over-the-top, celebratory behavior.
It’s the whole-cover-up-thing that made matters worse. The fabricated story, that he and three of his teammates, Jack Conger, Gunnar Bentz and Jimmy Feigen concocted about being robbed at gunpoint by three men posing as policemen, did a disservice to the entire Olympics and a great injustice to the Brazilian people.
In record time, four of Lochte’s sponsors, Speedo, Ralph Lauren, Syneron-Candela, and Japanese mattress maker, Airweave, have dropped him. Lochte, one of the greatest swimmers in the world, will be remembered more for one stupid, summer night’s crazy antics and the resultant scandal, than for all his other accomplishments. His actions and his lies have cost him a fortune, but infinitely worse in my opinion, is that he will forever be branded a liar, and his once stellar reputation has been tarnished for all times.
From this modern-day day morality tale, we can all heed the warning to own-up to our mistakes, because when the truth comes out — the cover-up becomes a bigger crime than whatever it was that we were trying to conceal in the first place. There seems to be so many conflicting stories coming from all the parties involved, including the Rio police’s version of the story, which has more holes in it than Swiss cheese, and we may never really know what the hell happened that night, but it seems if the four swimmers had just come clean in the first place, admitting their part in any wrongdoing, then the whole event would’ve never been blown out of proportion, and it wouldn’t have garnered so much global attention.
My generation learned this lesson all too well from Richard Nixon and Watergate. The burglary itself paled in comparison to the efforts taken to hide that crime, which included: payoffs, bribes, obstruction of justice, and other crimes committed that ultimately destroyed many people’s careers and lives.
Ryangate will teach the up-and-coming generations a hard lesson in reputation protection and accountability, and this simple truth: When you go out partying with your peers, there should always be a designated person accompanying all of you, just to make sure none of you do something stupid or tragic that could haunt all of you for all the days of your lives.
Cindi Sansone-Braff, the Romance Whisperer, talks with the dead to show you how to live well and love better. She is an award-winning playwright and has a BFA in theatre from the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Grant Me a Higher Love and Why Good People Can’t Leave Bad Relationships. Visit her web site at: https://www.grantmeahigherlove.com.