Young, beautiful, and with all the time in the world: Nobody could blame influencer Luana Alonso for sharing her summer holiday in Paris with her half-million followers on Instagram.
But the Paraguayan team chiefs who sent her packing didn’t see it that way. For Alonso is not just an influencer but an Olympic swimmer—or at least she was, very briefly.
The 20-year-old, who lives and trains in Texas, was chosen to represent Paraguay in the women’s 100m butterfly, an honor she shared proudly on social media.
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She was dumped out of the competition on the first full day of the Paris Games after coming in sixth in her heat in a time three seconds slower than her personal best.
Distraught at the result, a tearful Alonso announced her retirement live on television, confirming it with a post on Instagram: “Sorry Paraguay, I only have to thank you.”
If that was the end of her Olympic career, it was just the start of her Paris vacation and a run-in with team chiefs who saw her more as a bad influence than an influencer.
Since her arrival in Paris, Alonso’s Insta and TikTok feeds had been filling up with shots and clips of her enjoying the French capital: cruising down the Seine, posing atop the Eiffel Tower, grabbing a selfie with Rafa Nadal.
What appears to have particularly annoyed team chiefs, however, was a trip to Disneyland Paris.
It was after that excursion that she was asked by Paraguayan Chef de Mission Larissa Schaerer to pack up and leave the athletes’ village because she was “creating an inappropriate atmosphere at the heart of Team Paraguay.”
“We are a serious team that seeks to compete, not to go sightseeing,” Camilo Perez, president of the Paraguayan Olympic Committee, told a Paraguayan radio station.
According to her latest Instagram post, Alonso is now back in the United States, her Olympic career and summer holiday in Paris over.
