20:33 – After Rio, the anti-doping agency: Ryan Lochte plummets for 14 months

This is his worst perf '! No sooner has he emerged from the troubled waters of Rio, Ryan Lochte plunges again: this time the king of the pool, six-time Olympic swimming champion, was suspended 14 months by the US anti-doping agency, announced Monday. USADA

It all started on May 24 for the 33-year-old swimmer, 37 times world champion (16 times in the big pool). He publishes a photo of him, on social networks, full infusion of a product completely legal. The cliche draws the attention of USADA, not so much for the content – though – but mostly for a settlement story. The agency decides to dig.

"The USADA investigation, to which Lochte fully cooperated, revealed that Lochte received an intravenous infusion of authorized substances," the agency said in its statement, specifying that the method contravened the rules in effect, namely that the man with the twelve Olympic medals used a higher dose (more than 100 mL in 12 hours) to that allowed.

So Ryan Lochte suspended until July 2019 , under the decision retroactive to the date of the photo. This means that the champion, already absent from the Worlds last year, will not be able to participate in the American championship this week in California, nor, especially, at the world championships next year.

"I did not take anything illegal, it was all legal, you can buy it at CVS or Walgreens (two supermarket chains and American pharmacies, ed) but there are rules and you have to comply with them" , politely agreed Ryan Lochte at a press conference on Monday where he said he accepted the decision.

– "Horrible American" –

The native of Canandaiga, New York, in any case, it would have gone well with this new and long sanction, its second in less than two years after its suspension of ten months (by the US Olympic committee) for the case of the false aggression at the Games of Rio de Janeiro, in 2016, which earned him the nickname "horrible American."

On August 14, 2016, Ryan Lochte and his compatriots Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger and James Feigen, all gold medalists in Rio, had claimed to have been pointed by men disguised as police as they returned to the Olympic Village After a drunken evening

The story was invented from scratch: on CCTV images, we see swimmers urinating on the walls of a gas station and tearing a poster, before quarreling with a security guard and their taxi driver who had called the police.

The diplomatic incident brushed but avoided, Lochte had acknowledged his wrongs and had apologized but the case, besides his judicial soap opera, had caused immense damage, especially in terms of image. Released by his sponsors, hated by public opinion, the mediator said he had thought of suicide.

Since then, Ryan Lochte has become a father and has set new sports goals. But with this new blow, time is running out.

Despite a gargantuan record, Lochte has always suffered the eternal comparison with the ogre Michael Phelps and his 23 Olympic titles.

The Games, precisely, he still wants to participate, with Tokyo-2020 online pattern. During the competition, he will celebrate his 36 years. Like an air of last chance