RIO DE JANEIRO — In 2008, one of the swimmers poised to foil Michael Phelps’s bid for a record eight Olympic gold medals was his American teammate Ryan Lochte, who was competing against Phelps in the individual medley events. While Phelps adhered to a regimented existence in the athletes’ village in Beijing, Lochte made himself sick gorging on free Big Macs.
After finishing a distant third to Phelps in the 400 I.M., their opening event, Lochte did not mind if all the world’s news media knew about his fast-food folly, speaking of it openly.
His Everyman behavior and his eccentricities, which extended to his 1970s consignment-shop wardrobe and his hip-hop-infused vocabulary, made Lochte stand out.