The swimming coach did not know what to expect when he dialed Klete Keller’s phone number.
An explanation of why Keller, an Olympic gold medalist, had been in the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol a week earlier? A defense of his actions, which have left him facing criminal charges? Denial? Rationalizing? Rage?
The last thing he expected was for Keller, the decorated swimmer he had known as a merry prankster, to dissolve into tears.
“He apologized to me,” Mark Schubert, who once trained Keller at the University of Southern California, said in recounting their conversation after Keller’s arrest last week.