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--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Welcome to In Conversation from Apple News Today. I'm Duarte Giraldino.
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--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Every weekend we talk with journalists behind the best stories on Apple News+. Today in In Conversation, we're talking with Brian Burnset. He recently wrote a piece for Sports Illustrated on Ryan Lochte. Lochte is the second most decorated swimmer in Olympic history.
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--:-- Duarte Giraldino: At the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, he won his sixth career gold medal. It should have been a triumph. Lochte was close to the end of his career, and a victory in Brazil could have been his chance to leave the sport at the height of his game.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But before he flew back home, Lochte had a night of heavy drinking that went too far. By the time he left Rio, his reputation was destroyed. More alcohol-related incidents and bad press soon followed. Eventually, this star swimmer wound up in rehab.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now Lochte is 36 years old, and he's looking for a chance at redemption. He wants to return to the Olympics this summer for the fifth time. And if he somehow defies the odds and makes the team, He's going to be the oldest ever U.S. men's swimmer.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The trials for Tokyo are taking place right now. Lochte is laser-focused on this goal. He's convinced if he makes the team, it could turn everything around. Bernsett's article in Sports Illustrated is called Ryan Lochte's Last Try.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can read and listen to it on Apple News with an Apple News Plus subscription. Burns had spent time with Lochte, watched his grueling practices, and spoke with him about his need to make it back to the Olympics just one more time.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Let's start with that night in Rio. For people who don't remember all the details, what happened there?
--:-- Brian Burnset: He got drunk, vandalized the gas station, and lied about it. Instead, he got held up and robbed when really he and the other swimmers that vandalized the gas station, And they were asked to pay for the damages.
--:-- Brian Burnset: Granted, they were held up at gunpoint. That part was true. But he embellished it and said that they been pulled over and people posing as cops had held him up and stolen money from him. That wasn't the case.
--:-- Brian Burnset: He was buzzed the next day during an interview and lied about it and tried to just skate his way through it. This behavior never caught up with him. And then it caught up with him in a big way when the lie was uncovered.
--:-- Brian Burnset: Before that infamous night in Rio he was living this work hard, play hard life to an extreme level. It worked for him for a long time, didn't it?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: It did. And part of that is because one, he could put his body through a lot. He could drink a ton and then still push himself in the pool and dust all his teammates in the morning and dust his competitors in the morning.
--:-- Brian Burnset: And two, it's because no one really checked him on it from college on. He had a roommate and other teammates that were – the coach just kind of said, hey, let's look after Ryan. You know, if he's going to go hard tonight, let's make sure he gets to bed so that he can go race.
--:-- Brian Burnset: I heard it over and over again from his father, from his coaches, from his friends. If you're going to be a man at night, you've got to be a man in the morning. That was the ethos that surrounded him and his training.
--:-- Brian Burnset: And he never got in trouble from it. He was always, because people were looking out for him, they kind of enabled that behavior. And as long as he kept winning, okay, go do all these foolish things. Go do all these inadvisable things.
--:-- Brian Burnset: But eventually it caught up with him. Put it into perspective. How successful was he after Rio? How high had he climbed?
--:-- Brian Burnset: So he was coming off his 12th medal after his fourth Olympic Games, seven figures worth of sponsorships in his portfolio. I'm not sure the precise car he had at the time, but I know subsequently he had a Porsche and a Range Rover and he'd had a reality show.
--:-- Brian Burnset: It was everything you'd think of kind of star, playboy, athlete. That's what he was. And that's what he was living, living the big life for someone that was towards the end of a swimming career.
--:-- Brian Burnset: It looks like he'd made it and amassed everything that you could ever want from punishing himself in the pool for all those hours. And then it went away. All because of that night in Rio.
--:-- Brian Burnset: That's correct. How far did he fall?
--:-- Brian Burnset: It got bad. Speedo left, Ralph Lauren left. Those were his two biggest sponsors. More importantly, though, beyond the financial side, he sunk into a pretty deep depression.
--:-- Brian Burnset: His brother told me he was crying over the phone often with him. His close, close friends, the inner circle that had looked out for him in college, believed in him and been there. He kind of cut them out for a time.
--:-- Brian Burnset: They were worried he was just drinking every day to kind of wash away. everything that had happened to wash away all the negativity that was being hurled his way. And it was a lot.
--:-- Brian Burnset: There was a lot coming from the media, this sort of tabloid ethos that exists. So, he was catching a lot from the outside. Internally, he was struggling with what he done and how people perceived him
--:-- Brian Burnset: He always wanted to be a people pleaser and now everyone hated him So he loses a lot of wealth He suffering through a depression
--:-- Brian Burnset: When he hits rock bottom, did he talk to you about that moment when he realized something's got to change?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: He did. And that moment was actually why I pitched the story and was interested in trying to track him down and speak with him in the first place.
--:-- Brian Burnset: It was a quick TMZ headline that had happened. I believe it was 2018, where he had been caught trying to kick a hotel door down early morning in California.
--:-- Brian Burnset: He was there for a sponsor event. He'd been drinking wildly at a party. He lost his key. And so instead of going to the desk, as you might do, his drunk mind said, well, the fastest way into my room is to try to kick the door down.
--:-- Brian Burnset: And the next day he was involved in a little fender bender at the airport. Police said alcohol was not related in the subsequent crash, but it was just kind of a cascade of bad news.
--:-- Brian Burnset: And that was the moment where he says that he realized he needed to go get help. His agent certainly nudged him in that direction, and he said that was the low moment.
--:-- Brian Burnset: That was the moment when he realized he needed to change. It was just a really dark time for him, so he did an outpatient treatment program at University of Florida, and that, he says, helped shift his perspective and change his behavior.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Now he's trying to make it back to the Olympics at 36. This is a huge challenge for someone his age, right?
--:-- Brian Burnset: Certainly. I mean think about your metabolism starts to slow down as you get a little older even if you are you know one of the best swimmers of all time uh your recovery times from workouts it takes longer to recover it's just harder to stay in prime shape in a sport where at 36 he's ancient and all his competitors are early to mid-20s that's when you peak for swimming because it's so demanding
--:-- Brian Burnset: So yeah he has had to be very disciplined with his lifestyle with what he puts in his body with his training. There's just very little wiggle room. There's no really room for him to slip up in any of those regards if he wants to try to achieve this, which no US man has to try to make a team and win a goal at this age.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And there's this one scene where you describe Ryan Lochte, he's just crying after a brutal practice. What are his workouts like? To the average person, they're superhuman.
--:-- Brian Burnset: And it's not necessarily the individual workouts, they're obviously taxing, but it's the accumulation of them. He swims nine times a week. They're two, two and a half hour sessions.
--:-- Brian Burnset: He does dry land training three times a week with some pretty intense plyometrics and weight training. And for a 20 something, that would be taxing. But for someone in their mid thirties it really tough because recovery times are so much slower
--:-- Brian Burnset: It just so much harder for your body to recover So when they doing these sprint repeats in the pool over and over and over again for someone in their mid-30s, and there's really no end in sight in the training, it's got to wear you down, not just physically, but mentally.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Why is he putting himself through this? What does he believe is going to happen if he achieves this very specific goal?
--:-- Brian Burnset: So the end goal for him, he's obviously put himself and his family through a lot with the mistakes he's made while drinking, most notably in Rio. That's been well covered, the incident at the gas station.
--:-- Brian Burnset: And he really feels like the only way to save his name beyond the kind of personal growth he's had out of the pool is to go succeed again in it. So that people's lasting image of him is not the Ryan Lochte, the American idiot in Rio that did that awful mistake.
--:-- Brian Burnset: It's the guy who bounced back. Everyone loves a comeback story, right? Broadcasters will love to tell that story this summer. Brands will pay him lavishly if he does mount this improbable comeback.
--:-- Brian Burnset: Beyond those kind of superficial gains and benefits from this quest, he really thinks he needs to do it to kind of redeem himself in the eyes of his family. And I don't think they see it that way.
--:-- Brian Burnset: His wife and father have said, we love him no matter what. He's grown away from the pool, but he wants to show his kids, hey, look, look what daddy did. He wants to prove himself to his family that, no, I did turn around.
--:-- Brian Burnset: And this is a very tangible way of demonstrating that, is trying to succeed this summer. There's so much riding on this for him.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: What happens if he doesn't make it? So that's the question that's hanging over all this. And as we report it, we realize that's the tension that's kind of hanging over these next few months.
--:-- Brian Burnset: And maybe even the rest of his life is, okay, what if you don't make it? And he couldn't quite score up to that question.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I think to be an athlete of that level for that long, that elite, he's the second most decorated swimmer in men's history. You can't let, oh, it's not going to happen into your mind.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can't grasp that that could even be an option. So I don't think he's allowed himself to consider what not making it would do to him when he's put this pressure on himself that he has to do it to quote unquote, redeem himself, whatever that means.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Thank you so much. Excellent reporting. I can't wait to see what happens. Thank you for the time. This was great.
