14 DAY TRIAL // With the Royal scandal now in bloom, Prince Harry is getting lots of media attention for his little Las Vegas stunt, which saw him exposed (literally) to the world in a couple of rather embarrassing shots. This is precisely why Ryan Lochte is happy he wasn't invited to that particular party.
Lochte, one of the big winners at the London Olympic Games from Team USA, was in Vegas the same time as Prince Harry and, as a video made available online confirms, he even got to race him in the pool.
Sitting down for an interview with Matt Lauer on The Today Show, Ryan says the race was Harry's idea, not his own and, while he had fun with him, he wasn't invited to hang out.
Come to think of it, considering what Harry did after the race (i.e. picked up girls and took them to his suite for a game of strip billiards, which was duly documented on one of the ladies' cellphone), Ryan is actually happy he wasn't invited.
One can imagine he's doing just fine without that much controversy in the press.
“We were at the same pool party and his people came over to my table and said Prince Harry wants to meet you. And I was like, 'Okay, let's go meet him',” Lochte says of how he came to race and beat Prince Harry in the pool.
“He was like, 'Do you want to do something? Do you want to race me in the pool?' And I just took off my shirt and jumped in and we just started racing,” he says.
Even though they didn't spend that much time together, Ryan could tell that Harry was a very cool guy, the kind you'd like to hang out with.
“He's really a nice guy, really talkative. He just wanted to meet me and wanted to race me, and I thought that was the coolest thing,” he says smiling.
Pressed by Lauer to say whether he'd have liked to be invited to the exclusive party afterwards, Lochte says he's “kinda happy” he wasn't.
“I don't need that,” he stresses.
In the same interview, Ryan talks about training for Rio and working on a career in showbiz. He doesn't think the latter will interfere with the former in any way. Check it out.