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Ryan Lochte are hoping for personal and financial rehabilitation
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Harry How / Getty Images
Ryan Lochte isn't used to waiting.
As a back and position specialist, swimmers always have busy weeks of competitions.
He also reported five events at the trails in Omaha in the US state of Nebraska, where the stars of the US swimming scene are currently fighting for the Olympics, but he only competed over 200 meters freestyle, to swim in, so to speak.
His race, the 200 meter individual medley, would only be on day five.
So we had to wait.
One chance to qualify for the Olympic Games again at the age of 36 - and at the same time save nothing less than your life.
At least that's how Lochte sees it.
It's a high-class field in Omaha, in no other country in the world are tickets for Tokyo so competitive.
It is also the first Olympic trials without Michael Phelps in this millennium.
A turning point, not just in the USA.
And so, with record Olympian Phelps in the stands, a successor is of course sought - no matter how big the footsteps are.
In the middle of it all, Lochte, a long-time companion of Phelps and the only one who could hold a candle to him at least sometimes, tries to swim to the exclusive club of those who have competed five times in the Summer Olympics.
Only in sixth place in the final
Qualified for the final on Friday evening (local time) with the sixth fastest time (1: 58.65 minutes), ahead of him, among others, the nine years younger 2017 world champion Chase Kalisz (1: 57.19) and a particularly strong swimming in Omaha Michael Andrew (1: 55,26), 22 years young.
The 36-year-old Lochte will have to improve a lot to get one of the two places on the team.
Ryan Lochte has long been the pop star among swimmers.
The ace in the pool with the unique underwater kicks and the legendary zeal for training, which threw tractor tires and rolled barrels to build up strength.
Outside the pool, Lochte was the weirdo with the diamond-studded ring gear and the reality TV flop, who once patented the saying "Yeah!" And tore his meniscus while trying to breakdance in front of the TV.
Today, however, Lochte is above all the one who, with a bold lie about an armed robbery during the 2016 Rio Games, became the epitome of the privileged American. Back then, he invented the attack to cover up the fact that he and his colleagues had misbehaved. He's the one who was banned from doping because of an unauthorized vitamin infusion in the crowd - and an Instagram post about it. He is a fallen hero.
Lochte's livelihood is paid for by sponsors, and while the bird of paradise was still good for business, the scandal professional companies like Speedo and Ralph Lauren terminated the partnership.
There is talk of losses in the millions.
Lochte moved with his pregnant partner Kayla Rae Reid from a 400 square meter house into a three-room apartment, this time trying to keep afloat with TV formats for fallen celebrities.
Rio 2016 should have been its climax, a brilliant end to a brilliant career.
Instead, Lochte was certain: just four more years of torture and a conciliatory graduation in Tokyo could save his legacy.
Pain drowned in large amounts of alcohol
But Lochte had problems long before that. All his adult life he drowned the pain that training, pressure and insecurity brought with it in large amounts of alcohol, he recently told Sports Illustrated magazine. His excesses were no secret, he celebrated his search for distraction and his urge to make people around him too public even during his college days. But as long as he performed well in training and competitions, and he did so as energetically and successfully as hardly anyone, many of them did not care about his self-sabotage. Lochte included.
It was only when he made headlines again just three months after his 14-month anti-doping ban had expired by trying to kick in his hotel room door that he went to a rehab clinic of his own free will, as he says.
"I was on my way to a dark, dark place," Lochte told the Guardian.
And he recognized a pattern: “It seemed like every time I drank a lot, I was doing something stupid.
So it was definitely a wake up call.
I had to grow up and say to myself: It's not you. You have to change who you are. "
Lochte is now a father and he thinks about this role. And on the successes he had celebrated as a swimmer, after all, only Phelps had won more Olympic swimming medals among men. That still has to be true, thinks Lochte. Since then, he has not only dreamed of becoming the oldest American swimmer among the five rings. He wants to become the oldest swimming medalist. Last year he even revealed that he wanted to attack his twelve-year-old world record.
Once again up to Olympus: Lochte sees this as the only chance to save his battered reputation - and thus, he emphasizes, also to be the husband and father that his wife and two children deserve.
"It's the greatest pressure I've ever had in my life because I have so much to prove, not just for myself, but also for all the doubters out there, all the naysayers who cheer me on," said Lochte.
"It's my chance to prove I used to be a fool, but I've changed."