Early Life
Lochte was born in Rochester, New York, the son of Ileana "Ike" and Steven R. Lochte. His mother is Cuban and was born and raised in Havana, while his father is of German and English descent. He has two older sisters, Kristin and Megan, and two younger brothers, Devon and Brandon. During his early childhood, his family lived in Canandaigua, New York, but moved to Florida so his father could coach swimming. Lochte was taught to swim at the age of five by both of his parents. Ryan was often kicked out of his father's swimming classes for misbehaving, which often included pulling other children's legs, blowing bubbles, and hiding at the other end of the pool. Lochte only began taking swimming seriously when he was a junior in high school. Steve Lochte said, "I would send him to go shower when he was messing around. He spent more time in the showers than he did in the pool." At fourteen years old, Ryan's loss at the Junior Olympics changed his attitude towards swimming: "I suddenly said, 'I'm sick of losing'. After that I trained hard and I never lost there again."
He is a 2002 graduate of Spruce Creek High School in Port Orange, Florida.
Read more about this topic: Ryan Lochte
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“In a period of a people’s life that bears the designation “transitional,” the task of a thinking individual, of a sincere citizen of his country, is to go forward, despite the dirt and difficulty of the path, to go forward without losing from view even for a moment those fundamental ideals on which the entire existence of the society to which he belongs is built.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)