Luisa Rizzo wins drone racing world title, defies expectations

Luisa Rizzo did more than win a title in Hangzhou. She beat one of the deepest fields in drone racing, outlasting 111 of the world’s best pilots to claim the 2024 Women’s World Drone Racing Championship and cement her place at the sharpest end of a sport built on reflexes, precision and nerve.

The World Air Sports Federation’s official results list Rizzo as the women’s individual champion from the event held in Hangzhou, China, from October 31 to November 3, 2024. That championship was not a one-note contest, either. It carried separate individual classifications for overall, junior and women, along with a national team competition, which underlined how layered the sport has become as it continues to expand internationally.

Rizzo’s rise gives that competitive structure a new face. Fra Noi’s profile described the victory as the high point of a career that had already carried her to the top of a sport many still assume is defined by equipment rather than by the pilot. She was 23 in that profile, lives with spinal muscular atrophy and uses a motorized wheelchair, yet still reached a level that demands absolute control under pressure. Her path began in 2017, when her father bought her a drone to help keep her hands moving. Eight years later, she had flown into the center of a world championship field and emerged with gold.

The resume behind that result is substantial. The FAI said Rizzo had flown at least 15 World Cups and competed in three FAI World Championships, in 2018, 2023 and 2024. That kind of experience matters in FPV racing, where tiny mistakes are punished instantly and the margins are often measured in fractions of a second. Rizzo’s win was not a sentimental exception to the sport’s standards. It was a performance that met them.

The broader significance is just as clear. Rizzo said hearing the national anthem played for her after the Hangzhou victory was unforgettable, and that sense of arrival mattered because the win widened the sport’s public image without softening its competitive edge. Italian coverage had already recognized her as an Alfiere della Repubblica for sporting and social merit, and her championship run in China added a world title to that profile. At a time when drone racing is still wrestling with access, visibility and who gets seen as a top-tier pilot, Rizzo’s result showed that the lane at the front is open to a wider range of athletes than the sport has always projected.