Darja Varfolomeev (Russian: Да́рья Дми́триевна Варфоломе́ева; born 4 November 2006) is a Russian-born German rhythmic gymnast. She is the 2024 Olympic all-around champion, a three-time consecutive (2023, 2025 and 2026) World all-around champion and the 2026 European all-around champion. She is also the 2022 World all-around silver medalist and a two-time (2024, 2025) European all-around bronze medalist.
At the national level, she is a four-time (2022, 2023, 2025, 2026) German all-around champion and a two-time all-around junior champion (in 2019 and 2021).
Varfolomeev was born in Barnaul, Russia, to father Dmitry and mother Tatiana. Her grandfather is an ethnic German who lives in Aschaffenburg, through whom she has German citizenship. She started rhythmic gymnastics at a young age after being brought to the gym by her mother, a former rhythmic gymnast. Her father is a chef.
Varfolomeev attended a training camp in Germany in 2018. She was asked to stay, and though her parents were uncertain, Varfolomeev said that she wanted to do so, which she later said "was the most difficult decision of my life, but also the greatest decision I made at the time". She moved to Germany in 2019 without her parents to be coached by Olympic silver medalist Yulia Raskina. Varfolomeev initially lived in a boarding school and was visited by her grandparents when they were able to do so. Her parents moved to Germany as well three years later.
She owns a chihuahua. Due to her training load ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics, she reduced her schoolwork and delayed her graduation from secondary school.
She was criticized in Ukrainian media in 2024 for photos on her Instagram, some of which showed her competing in Russian-occupied Crimea in 2021, when she was 14, and one which showed a wooden map of the world apparently bought in Russia and depicting Ukrainian territories annexed in 2022 by Russia. The photos were removed a day later.
At the first Junior World Championships in rhythmic gymnastics in Moscow in 2019, she placed 15th in the team event with Margarita Kolosov. She also placed 15th in qualifications for the clubs, which was the only apparatus she competed with.
2022 season: Senior debut and World silver all-around medal
She debuted in the senior category in 2022, at World Cup Tashkent, where she won the bronze medal in the all-around. She took another bronze medal in the hoop final and two silver medals in the ball and ribbon finals, and she placed 4th with clubs. On May 20–22, she competed at the World Challenge Cup in Pamplona, where she took 4th place in the all-around. She also won two gold medals in the ball and ribbon finals and was 4th place in the clubs final. Varfolomeev continued collecting medals at World Challenge Cup Portimão, where she won silver in the all-around behind Israeli Adi Asya Katz. She took three more medals in the apparatus finals - two gold with ball and clubs and one silver with hoop.
In June she competed at the European Championships in Tel Aviv, along with Margarita Kolosov, the senior group, and the two juniors Lada Pusch and Anna-Maria Shatokhin; she won two bronze medals in the ball and clubs finals. In late August she took part in the World Cup in Cluj-Napoca, where she was 6th in the all-around, 4th with ball and 4th with clubs.
Varfolomeev was also selected for the World Championships in Sofia along with Kolosov and the senior group. There she won gold in the clubs final, silver in the all-around, team category, and ball, as well as bronze with hoop.
2023 season: World all-around gold sweep
In 2023 she showed her clubs routine in the Italian clubs championship' first stage, where she competed for Motto Viareggio. Due to a foot operation in December 2022, Varfolomeev competed with only two apparatuses in the Fellbach-Schmiden Tournament, where she won gold in both the ball and clubs finals. She won one medal at the 2023 European Championships, the gold in ribbon.
At the 2023 World Championships held in late August, Varfolomeev won every gold medal available in the all-around and the four apparatus finals, making her the first rhythmic gymnast to do so since Evgeniya Kanaeva in 2009 and fourth to ever do so after Bianka Panova, Oksana Kostina, and Kanaeva. It was the first world all-around title for a German rhythmic gymnast in nearly 50 years, after Carmen Rischer won the 1975 World Championships.
Shortly afterward, in September, she spoke to the sports committee in the Bundestag to advocate for increased funding for the sport, noting that her parents personally paid thousands of euros for her to participate on the World Cup series. At the time, out of the 103 Summer Olympic disciplines, rhythmic gymnastics was ranked 99th for potential for a German athlete to medal by the German Olympic Sports Confederation.
In October, she was a co-winner of the Piotr Nurowski Prize awarded by the European Olympic Committees to athletes under 18, along with Turkish swimmer Kuzey Tunçelli. During the off-season, she traveled to give master classes in Spain and Poland.
In March, Varfolomeev competed at the Rhythmic Gymnastics Grand Prix stage in Marbella, where she won the all-around bronze medal and qualified for the hoop, clubs, and ribbon finals. In the hoop final, she won gold.
The next month, she competed at the World Cup in Baku. She won the all-around gold ahead of Elvira Krasnobaeva and Sofia Raffaeli, and she then went on to win three of the four event final golds as well in the hoop, ball, and ribbon finals. In the clubs final, she dropped her apparatus and came in third behind Raffaeli and Taisiia Onofriichuk. The week after, she competed at the next World Cup in Tashkent, where she once again won the all-around, this time ahead of Takhmina Ikromova and Boryana Kaleyn. In the apparatus finals, she won two more golds in clubs and ribbon, and silver in the other two finals, hoop and ball.