FRANKFURT – Sofia Raffaeli earned a bronze medal worth its weight in gold at the Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships on August 15. Thanks to her third-place finish in the All-Around event in Frankfurt with 117.550 points, behind Germany's Darja Varfolomeev, the world's leading scorer with 119.500, and just 0.50 behind Bulgaria's Stiliana Nikolova, second with 117.600, Italian gymnastics has qualified for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.
The top three gymnasts in the World All-Around competition, in fact, awarded their respective nations their individual Olympic passes. The pass isn't nominative; it belongs to the country, but it was Sofia Raffaeli who earned it on the Festhalle platform. The twenty-two-year-old from the Marche region, a member of the Fiamme Oro, is the first athlete in the entire CONI mission, considering all Olympic sports, to secure a spot for Italy at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, almost two years early. President Andrea Facci, interim national technical director of small apparatus, immediately received congratulations from the head of the Foro Italico, Luciano Buonfiglio.
Sofia Raffaeli is now a legend of Italian sport. Olympic bronze medalist at Paris 2024 (unmatched by any Italian athlete before her), all-around gold medalist at Sofia in 2022, silver medalist at Valencia in 2023, world bronze medalist at Rio de Janeiro 2025, and world bronze medalist today at Frankfurt 2026. Five major events, five podium finishes.
