Career
Originally from Sydney, where she started in Little Athletics at the Sylvania Waters Athletics Track, Rizzo's primary focus was dancing. "I started dancing at age six and fell in love with it. I was selected into a performing arts high school with dreams of becoming a full time company dancer. Growing up my focus was always on dancing. I had little time to train for surf lifesaving and athletics and was always a sport I did on the side”. Aged 13, Rizzo became the youngest female to win an Australian beach sprint title and was female Youth Beach Sprint and Flag champion in 2008/9. After school, for three months Bree went to a full-time dance school in Sydney. “I didn’t like it whatsoever, I just lost my passion for dancing doing the course. It was a very strange time, I had been so keen on being a full-time dancer in a company, and all of a sudden, I was like ‘no, I want to move to Queensland and follow my running career.” So, in 2013, aged 17, she moved to Queensland's Gold Coast to pursue beach sprinting professionally. She has been coached since by Ryan Hoffman. She became Open Female Beach Sporting World Champion in 2016 and Open Female Australian Beach Sprint Champion in 2019.
Rizzo took up track sprinting in 2019. She achieved second place in the 100 m at the 2021 and 2022 Australian Track and Field Championships. At the 2022 Oceania Athletics Championships, Rizzo was also runner-up in the 100 metres, and third in the 200 metres. She qualified for the 100 m at the 2022 World Athletics Championships where she ran a then personal best of 11.29s. In the same year, she was selected for the 2022 Commonwealth Games in the 100 m and 4 × 100 m relay team. She made the semi-finals in the Women's 100 metres. The relay team, which was initially fourth with what was then Australia's fourth fastest 4 × 100 m time, was eventually elevated to bronze medal status after a member of the Nigerian team which initially won the gold medal was found to have committed a rule violation.
In 2022, Rizzo also graduated from Bond University on the Gold Coast with a Bachelor of Communications (Business) degree, majoring in marketing and public relations.
In 2023, Rizzo set a new PB of 11.23 in rain in March in Auckland and, in early April, was again a silver medalist in the 100 m at the 2023 Australian Track & Field Champions. A hamstring strain delayed her 2023 European campaign but she eventually opened it with a fast 11.25 run in Belgium in July. She again represented Australia in the individual 100 m and the 4 × 100 m relay at the 2023 World Championships in Athletics in Budapest.
In 2024, she was part to the three times record-setting Australian 4 × 100 m relay team which eventually set the year-end record of 42.48 on 20 July 2024 at the London Diamond League Athletics Meet. She represented Australia in the Women's 100 metres at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, where she made the semi-finals after running 11.26 seconds (+0.1w) to finish 3rd in her heat, as well as running in the Women's 4 × 100 m relay team (which finished fourth in its heat but did not advance to the final).
Rizzo won the 2025 120 m Women's Stawell Gift off scratch in 13.52 seconds.
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