Seventeen years separate her first bronze at the Mediterranean Games from the one she won just days ago in Taranto. In between lie four Olympic Games, San Marino’s first-ever Olympic medal, another podium finish in Tokyo, international victories, records, and a career spent consistently at the summit of world trap shooting. Alessandra Perilli, at 38, is still there. Among the very best. And perhaps it is this, even more than yet another medal, that truly captures the stature the Sammarinese shooter has achieved.
The bronze from Taranto 2026 is Perilli’s fourth medal at the Mediterranean Games: bronze in Pescara 2009, bronze again in Mersin 2013, gold in Tarragona 2018, and now another third-place finish. Four podiums spread across seventeen years — a statistic that alone speaks to the consistency of a champion who has crossed generations without ever truly leaving the stage.
Her international story began when she was very young. Perilli took up shooting following a family tradition, and within a few years reached the highest levels of the sport. The great leap came at the start of the last decade, when victories on the World Cup circuit carried her toward her first Olympic appearance.
London 2012 is probably the moment San Marino first fully realised just how great Alessandra Perilli could be. At 24, serving as the flag-bearer for the Titano, she found herself in contention for an Olympic medal. She finished fourth after a shoot-off, one step away from a podium finish that would have been unprecedented for the Republic. It was one of the most bitter days of her career — but also the one that established her definitively on the international stage.
That near-miss did not become a final destination. It became the start of a nine-year pursuit.
Perilli kept winning and collecting results. Podium finishes followed in the World Cup, along with bronze at the European Games in Baku, victory in the 2015 World Cup final, and a second Olympic appearance at Rio 2016. In 2018 she marked another milestone in her career: a world record of 122 out of 125 targets, and gold at the Mediterranean Games in Tarragona. In 2020 she even reached world number one in the women’s trap rankings.
Then came Tokyo.
29 July 2021 is a date Sammarinese sport will not easily forget. In the women’s trap final, Alessandra Perilli won bronze and gave San Marino the first Olympic medal in its history. What had slipped away by the narrowest of margins nine years earlier in London had finally become reality.
And it didn’t end there. A few days later, Perilli returned to the range alongside Gian Marco Berti and produced another remarkable feat: silver in the mixed team trap event. Two medals at the same Olympics, for an athlete from one of the smallest states in the world.
It is probably here that Alessandra Perilli’s career definitively crossed the boundary of mere sporting achievement. Because from that moment on, her name no longer belonged only to the record books of trap shooting. It became part of San Marino’s history. A first Olympic medal cannot be erased or surpassed: it remains forever tied to the one who won it.
There would already be enough there to consider an extraordinary career complete. Perilli, instead, kept going.
She made it all the way to Paris 2024, the fourth Olympics of her career, continuing all the while to measure herself against the world’s best shooters. Opponents changed, seasons passed, but her name kept appearing in the competitions that matter.
And now, here we are in Taranto.
At 38, seventeen years after that first Mediterranean medal won in Pescara, Perilli once again found herself competing for a podium finish. She closed qualification on 113 targets and had to go through a shoot-off to reach the final. When every mistake can mean elimination, she once again managed to stay cool. She came through the shoot-off, made it among the best, and claimed bronze.
This is what makes her latest medal so special.
It is not the most important medal in her collection, and it probably won’t be the first one people recall when looking back on her career. But it tells a story that Olympic medals alone cannot explain: the ability to remain competitive for almost twenty years.
In trap shooting, talent alone is not enough. It takes concentration, technique, the ability to handle pressure and, above all, a consistency that is extremely difficult to maintain season after season. Perilli has done exactly that since she was very young. She has known the heartbreak of Olympic fourth place, reached the top of the world rankings, set records, won across the Mediterranean, and, above all, opened a door for San Marino that, until Tokyo, no one had ever managed to walk through.
This is why simply calling her one of San Marino’s greatest athletes today risks being an understatement.
Alessandra Perilli is already a legend of San Marino sport. Not only for what she has won, but for how long she has managed to keep winning it. And for having shown that even from a Republic of little more than thirty thousand people, it is possible to reach the most important podium in the world.
The bronze from Taranto adds another medal to the collection. But above all, it adds another year, another final and another podium finish to a story that already seemed complete.
And one that, evidently, has not yet finished being written.
