Speaking with Matt Lauer on this morning's Today Show, Ryan Lochte talked about his recent encounter with Prince Harry in Vegas, where the two reportedly engaged in a drunken swimming race which the Prince won.

Asked how the whole thing came about, Lochte told Lauer it was extremely extemporaneous: "His people came over to my table and said, Hey, Prince Harry wants to meet you.' I was like, ‘Alright, yeah, let's go meet him.' So I went over there, met him."

Lauer soon got down to brass tacks, turning the conversation toward the now-infamous strip billiards party Prince Harry held in his VIP suite.

"So after the race did he say, 'Hey Ryan, I'm throwing another kind of party in my hotel room, would you like to show up at that?" Lauer asked Lochte through chuckles. "No, no, he never said anything like that," Lochte responded, adding that he was "kinda happy" he wasn't invited. "I don't need that," he said.

Lochte stuck around for the Today Show's four hour, and was once again grilled by Kathie Lee and Hoda about his brush with royalty.

Though his responses were mostly the same, Lochte did reveal that the prince legitimately beat him. "Well, the first thing I said was, 'You sure you want to lose?,'" Lochte recalled. "And he was like, 'Sure, 'cmon, let's go.' And you know what? He's an actual, pretty good swimmer."

[screengrab via Today]