Paraguayan swimmer Luana Alonso kicked out of Olympic Village

The Olympic Village in Paris has provided plenty of drama over the last two weeks, and now a swimmer from Paraguay has been kicked out. Female swimmer Luana Alonso was asked to leave the Olympic Village following the conclusion of her swimming program after the Paraguayan Olympic Committee determined she was “creating an inappropriate environment.”

“Her presence is creating an inappropriate atmosphere within Team Paraguay,” Larissa Schaerer, the head of the Paraguayan Olympic Committee, said in a statement published by The Sun. “We thank her for proceeding as instructed, as it was of her own free will that she did not spend the night in the Athletes’ Village.”

Alonso competed in the women’s 100m butterfly semifinals, but failed to advance to the finals. She came in sixth in her heat with a time of 1:03.09. After the event, she announced her retirement from swimming.

“It’s official! I’m retiring from swimming, thank you all so much for your support!” Alonso wrote on Instagram after the event. “Sorry Paraguay. I just have to say thank you!”

“Swimming: thank you for allowing me to dream, you taught me to fight, to try, perseverance, sacrifice, discipline and many more things,” she wrote, including a bunch of photos of her competing at the Paris Olympics.

“I gave you part of my life and I wouldn’t change that for anything in the world because I lived the best experiences of my life, you gave me thousands of joys, friends from other countries that I will always carry in my heart, unique opportunities. It’s not goodbye, it’s see you soon.”

A collegiate athlete as well as an Olympic athlete, Alonso spent a season at Virginia Tech before transferring to SMU. Instead of supporting her teammates from Paraguay, she reportedly spent time at Disneyland.

Paris Olympics: Team USA sets World Record in 4×100 IM relay

Team USA came into the Women’s 4×100 meter medley as the favorite to win gold. That’s exactly what the Americans did too, led by Torri Huske, Regan Smith, Lilly King, and Gretchen Walsh, setting a world record for the event in the process.

This race sees different swimmers swim 100 meters of the four different competitive strokes, the backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle. In the overall time, Team USA set the world record with a time of 3:49.63.

With that, the USA won its eighth gold medal in swimming at the Paris Olympics. That put it one ahead of Australia, who has long been a rival of the Americans in swimming. It was also the Australians who ended up taking silver in the Women’s 4×100 meter medley. The Americans won 28 total medals in swimming, which was the most of any nation.

First into the pool was Regan Smith on the backstroke. She established a short lead, which Lilly King then built on in the breaststroke. From there, Gretchen Walsh was dominant in the butterfly. By the time Torri Huske was in the pool for the freestyle final leg, it wasn’t a question of whether or not the Americans would win gold, but if they’d break the world record. They, of course, did.