U.S. swimmers Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger arrived at a police station in downtown Rio on Thursday (August 18) to give evidence about an incident at at a gas station on Sunday (August 14).
Bentz and Conger were taken off their flight by police on Wednesday (August 17) evening as the authorities wanted to talk to them about their accounts of what happened.
Brazil TV aired a closed-circuit television video on Thursday from a gasoline station in Rio de Janeiro showing Bentz, Conger and their two mates - James Feigen and Ryan Lochte - involved in a dispute with employees, over what a security sources said was damage to the premises.
The images broadcast on Globo TV appeared to show the swimmers being prevented from leaving the station by security.
The video does not show them causing any damage, but only being hussled out of the bathroom by uniformed employees of the Shell station.
Three of the swimmers are made to sit on the ground with their hands in the air. At one point, Lochte stands and appears to argue with the guards but is made to sit down again.
On Sunday, Lochte had told NBC that the taxi he was travelling in with his three team mates was flagged down by robbers posing as police and they held a gun to his head during a robbery. He made no mention of stopping at a gas station.
NBC host Matt Lauer said late on Wednesday that Lochte repeated a slightly modified version to NBC in an interview not yet aired, saying the swimmers had stopped at a gas station and that a gun was pointed in his direction during the robbery.
The Shell service station is close to the Olympic Park where sporting action has been overshadowed over the past two weeks by a string of muggings and robberies, including the hold-up of two visiting government ministers.
Staff at the station said the swimmers ripped an advertising plaque off the wall while they were urinating. Security was called and an argument ensued, said one employee who declined to give his name because he was instructed not to talk by police.
An employee of the gasoline station, who declined to give his name, said he had provided CCTV images to police and had been told not to comment further.
A sign on one of the bathrooms at the site had a sign on it saying "Please Do Not Enter".
A spokesperson for the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) declined to comment.
The USOC said earlier on Thursday that three of the swimmers who remain in Brazil would be helping police with their investigation, after authorities stopped two of them leaving the country the previous day. Lochte returned to the United States on Monday (August 15).
Rio Games organisers on Thursday defended the four swimmers whose accounts of an armed robbery at the weekend are under question by Brazilian police, saying they were just kids who were having fun and made a mistake.
