Ryan Lochte has been estranged from his mother Ileana ‘for years’

12-time Olympic medalist Ryan Lochte revealed he’s been estranged from his mother Ileana ‘Ike’ Aramburu ‘for years’ over some ‘very hurtful’ things she told him before he welcomed his first child.

‘I told her that she was going to be a grandma, and I’m having a kid she said some very, very hurtful things that kind of ended our relationship, me and her,’ the 35-year-old swimmer recalled on Wednesday’s In Depth with Graham Bensinger.

‘She said that she’ll never apologize. She has nothing to say sorry for, and from there on, it’s – I haven’t spoken to her in years…Knowing my mom, she’s stubborn as hell, she’ll never apologize. I’m stubborn too and that’s probably where I get it from. And all I want is a sincere apology.’

Ryan indicated the Cuban-born matriarch had turned their family against his father Steven, who remarried a woman called Natalie after their difficult 2011 divorce.

‘At one point, we were all against [my father], and then later on in life, it changed,’ Lochte explained.

‘Me and my dad have been closer than we’ve ever been right now…How [Natalie] treats me, my family, my dad. She’s the best. She’s like my mom.’

The SPIRE Institute ambassador and his wife of two years – Bead the Voice designer Kayla Reid – are proud parents of three-year-old son Caiden Zane and 15-month-old daughter Liv Rae.

‘We don’t talk about [my mother], because it was just something that happened to me and her that crushed us, but we moved forward and we stuck together as a family,’ Ryan admitted.

‘I hate to say this but I don’t care [about my mother]. I’m happy right now with my family. My job is to protect my family. And I will do anything, no matter what, to protect my family.’

Lochte has been busy training for the Olympic Games in Tokyo, which were postponed from 2020 to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.