Following on from it’s popularity, I have compiled a second list of Pro Athlete Websites. These are my favourite athlete websites and updated sites that I have come across in the past few months. It is not an exhaustive list as I simply could not find any others to even come up with a ‘Top 25′, which is either a result of other athletes having terrible SEO which meant I couldn’t find them on Google, or their websites weren’t up to par. It still suprises me how many athletes don’t put the effort (or money) in to their websites and social media when the brands of the world have very much taken up this challenge and appear to be putting their money where their mouth is in terms of spending marketing dollars on web-based opportunities rather than TV and print alone.

Click on the screencaps to go direct to the athletes website [ websites are NOT ranked in any particular order]

Lewis Hamilton
I really like everything about Lewis Hamilton’s new website for 2010. The dark graphics, the use of jquery (only the header section is Flash, navigation and other elements are lightweight jquery) the simple navigation, the minimal and professional look. I also love the attention to detail on the favicon logo.

Lance Armstrong
Off the bike, Lance Armstrong has accomplished many things. His new website captures not only his cycling but his charity work, his multiple books and his LiveStrong Foundation. It is very minimal, very clean and white. I’m not a big fan of the use of Flash where jquery could’ve worked better, but I do like the way the site is put together and the use of BIG images (very 2010~!).

Rafael Nadal
I’d already featured Spanish tennis superstar Rafael Nadal’s website in the previous Top 25 Athlete Websites article, however his new 2010 website also gets a mention. I love the fact it’s entirely using jquery instead of Flash for all the animated and navigation elements. Nadal’s ‘next opponent’, ‘current tournament’ and ‘pro shop’ sections allow the user to easily and visual follow Nadal at any of his competitions and purchase the latest merchandise straight from the front page. The colour use of blue/white/grey looks very slick also.

Steven Jackson
Despite the fact this website has terrible ‘auto-play’ music which I absolutely DESPISE, this website of NFL running back Steven Jackson has great use of big images and integrates some motion video in to the background. Again it overuses Flash when unnecessary which adds to the loading time, but overall the site has a very chic look.

Amanda Beard
I also featured Amanda Beard’s old website in the previous post on Athlete Websites, but I had to include her 2010 website just because it is so visually stunning. Although it’s a full flash website and links more to her twitter and facebook pages than actual content on the site, the graphics and composed photos are really, really cool and well polished. The site gets a 10/10 for visual appeal, even at the expense of usability.

Monica Abbott
Team USA Softball star Monica Abbott’s new website by FusionSports is very cool. Although there is absolutely no use for the splash screen, inside the website the layout is very clean, professional and the use of ‘mobile connect’ integration as well as the sign-up elements are second to none. I really like this website.

Victoria Azarenka
I included this new website of Victoria Azarenka (designed by Hallpass Media) because it uses ‘Delegate’ theme by Woothemes.com; the same theme I use for my AUS120.com website. I like the integration of video and twitter on the frontpage and the fact that this theme uses jquery entirely to power all the elements. The use of purple/pink in the colour-scheme is very girly and suit’s Victoria.

Ana Ivanovic
There are a lot of tennis girls in this list, as there are a lot with cool websites. This Serbian born tennis star’s new 2010 website is very 2010. Combining Flash with some jquery elements, the website focuses more on Ana’s good looks rather than just the tennis as there isn’t much ‘tennis related’ images on the frontpage. The website colour scheme is great and the overall site layout is top notch.

Joel Parkinson
This pro surfer’s website is really, really simple – a blog layout. It’s in the list because of it’s simplicity and easy of navigation. Admittedly, the real fans of surfing are the <15 kids who hit the beach every morning before and after school; this site works perfectly targeting that audience.

Mick Fanning
Mick Fanning is an Australian pro surfer. His website is very simple again, but uses great images and a very minimal layout to quickly showcase the talents of Mick and what’s going on in his career and life. I especially like the clean use of white text on dark backgrounds. Reminds me very much of Kimi Raikkonen’s website (the F1 driver featured in the first ‘Top Athlete Websites’ list).

Justine Henin
I read somewhere that Belgian tennis player Justine Henin is the highest paid player in women’s tennis. I’m not sure if that’s true but her website is definitely the coolest looking in women’s tennis. Using a fluid-width site the graphics, layout and overall look of the site really shout 2010! Although its a full flash site it is running on some very smoking fast servers and the loadtime is very minimal.

Misty May
American beach volleyball Olympic Gold Medalist Misty May’s new website is very white, minimal and clean; which I like. I think the top slider would’ve loaded much quicker with jquery rather than flash, but overall the site has a very clean look which I believe works well for professional athletes.

Ray Lewis
This website is actually a product page for American NFL linebacker Ray Lewis’ new iPhone app for training. That being said the site is very clean, very informative and uses some great images of the iPhone and layout to promote the app.

Gary Player
This website makes the list simply because of the amount of content built in to this website, which would have been a mammoth usability headache when originally designing the site. Apart from all the info on legendary golf player Gary Player (nice name, huh?) they’ve managed to fit in all the information on Gary’s golf course design, real estate, hotels, charity work and foundation, in a very clean, slick looking and minimal layout.

Krystal Weir
Australian Olympian and World Champion sailor Krystal Weir’s new website uses a WooThemes.com template and the simple background of the ocean and a jquery slider to showcase the athletes abilities in multiple sailing classes. Using a simple 2 column blog layout with video, images and sponsors showcased on the frontpage, the site is simplistic and designed to be easy on the eyes.

Kasey Kahne
This American NASCAR driver’s new website is very cool. It’s layed out much like a blog with two columns and features a nifty, simple jquery slider at the top. The layout is clean and intuitive and the colour scheme is very slick.

Jimmy Brennan
This one is well down the list as I don’t particular like the fact the full flash site took so long to load. It does get points for the layout and colour use however. This pro soccer player’s website is quite cool in a sport that is not famous for good websites for it’s super high-payed athletes.

Samantha Stosur
Another site with a simple clean layout and great colour scheme. Tennis star Samantha Stosur’s new site focusing on the news in a blog format with an easy to navigate menu and great first image on the homepage.

Tim Berkel
Australian triathlete Tim Berkel’s new site is sold simply on the top image alone. Using this fantastic shot, the overall colour scheme of the site blends in with how simple it is; another 2 column blog which is easy on the eyes and straight to the point. An athlete’s site doesn’t always have to be complex, it just needs to show off the athlete – job well done.

Parting Notes

I hope you enjoyed this second list of athlete websites and once again if you do some research yourself you’ll find that there’s not as many pro athletes out there (as we might think) with cool looking modern websites and even less using the glorious Wordpress as a CMS. I’d love it if you guys could Digg this article or at least spread it over the social bookmarking websites below as I’m sure there’s many up and coming athletes out there who see the benefits in promoting themselves on the web and want some inspiration when they build their personal website.

And feel free to post any more athlete’s sites in the comments!

As a bit of a plug, here is my new website for my alter-ego – pro windsurfer AUS120.com!

One more for the road …

This is a recent website I built for Olympian and World Champion sailor from Australia, Krystal Weir. Krystal needed a new website and the focus on this site was branding and media, showcasing the different classes Krystal sails in with a large custom jquery slider on the homepage and integration with other media like Flickr and Vimeo to show her Olympic photos and videos. The site required Krystal to be able to update it herself quickly and easily while on tour, so Wordpress was a natural choice.

Website Specifics:

• Wordpress (CMS)
• Irrisistible Theme (by Woothemes.com) completely customised from the original
• Custom logo and graphics on all pages
• Integration with Flickr and Vimeo
• Customised page templates with ’schedule’ table, and media galleries with Lightbox plugin

This is the 2010 relaunch of the personal design website. I wanted a cleaner version of my design site with better focus on the articles I am writing on the blog as they were a little hidden on the previous website. I still like the light on dark text so went with the black website as my other blogs are all WHITE at the moment, so this seemed a fresh change. I am using a highly customised version of ‘Geometric’ theme by Woothemes.com for this site.

Website Specifics:

• Wordpress (CMS)
• Geometric Theme (by Woothemes) completely customised from the original
• Custom logo and graphics on all pages
• Completely customised jquery fader on the frontpage
• Custom templates for Portfolio and Blog with alternating sidebar widths for different pages

This is the 2010 relaunch of the personal website for my alter-ego, Professional Windsurfer AUS-120 [that's my international sail number for those not in the know]. This new version aimed to tie in some more graphic media and also take the focus away from the ‘news’ posts which I had been finding difficult to keep up to date and push more towards social-media updates on Twitter etc. Some customisation of the Twitter API was used to make the Twitter-applet on the frontpage as well as a custom image-slider using jquery. This design features a re-make of the ‘Delegate’ theme by Woothemes.com.

Website Specifics:

• Wordpress (CMS)
• Delegate Theme (by Woothemes) completely customised from the original
• Custom logo and graphics on all pages
• Completely customised Twitter widget on the frontpage using Twitter API
• Integrated Vimeo Channel and Lightbox galleries
• Management of a large amount of content (stories, media, video, tagging)

Along with the release of www.point-7.com, I designed a dedicated Media Channel for online video content for the Point-7 International windsurfing brand. The scope of the project was the build a dedicated video channel with categories to allow embedding of movie content from various websites such as Vimeo, YouTube, Metacafe all playable in one player without having to re-load the page numerous times. The videos can play in HD natively and using jquery it is easy to navigate between the different categories of video.

Website Specifics:

• Wordpress (CMS)
• Video Theme (by Quommunication) completely customised from the original
• Custom logo and graphics on all pages
• Customised index template including automatically generated image thumbnails from each video

A new website built on Wordpress for the International windsurfing brand Point-7 International from Italy. This site is fairly complex, involving over 12 different customised page-templates with features such as filtered team-rider pages (using jquery), custom-built tables for showing product details, custom forms for warranty/product registration with image upload, jquery sliders on the frontpage and multiple languages!! This site was put together in only 4 weeks as it required immediate publish! The site also needed a dedicated MEDIA channel which is showcased at Media.Point-7.com. The site uses a completely customised version of ‘Delegate’ theme by Woothemes.com.

Website Specifics:

• Wordpress (CMS)
• Delegate Theme (by Woothemes) completely customised from the original
• Custom logo and graphics on all pages
• Completely customised jquery fader on the frontpage
• 12 Custom Page-Templates
• Filtered Team-Rider pages using Jquery
• Image galleries using jquery lightbox hover
• Custom built jquery MEGA-MENU for all page content
• Dedicated Media Channel for online video
• Custom forms for warranty and product registration with image upload
• Custom page templates for blog entries in each category

This site was the official event website for the 2010 Oceanic & Australian Formula Windsurfing Championships. This particular annual international windsurfing event is organised by myself so the website was hashed together relatively quickly to highlight information about the event, key dates, travel info and of course a home for the media content and press releases during the event. The site features a custom applet working with PAYPAL to transact automatic payment of entry fees linked to the database and also a jquery slider featuring the latest news. The site is built using the ‘Aperture’ theme by Woothemes.com

Website Specifics:

• Wordpress (CMS)
• Aperture Theme (by Woothemes) completely customised from the original
• Custom logo and graphics on all pages
• Jquery slider showing latest news
• Customised entry-fee payment system using PAYPAL linked to database

A redesign of the Storm-Riders Windsurfing Club homepage; a Sydney based windsurfing club which organises regular racing around NSW in Australia. The site needed a way to showcase what the club actually does in a easy to recognise manner; I achieved this by using the slider at the top of the page to showcase upcoming events and features. On each news article we needed easy to locate buttons to show the results, photo galleries and reports from each event – this was achieved by highly customised ‘custom fields’ in Wordpress. My aim for the site was to show windsurfing as a vibrant, colourful sport whilst still providing clear information.

I also designed a completely new logo for the club to represent ‘Storm-Riders’ and sailing.

Website Specifics:

• Wordpress (CMS)
• Headlines Theme (by WooThemes) completely customised from the original
• Custom logo and graphics on all pages
• Custom-field and slider modifications to showcase information
• Management of a large amount of content (stories, media, video, tagging)

The sister site to AUS120.com™. The ‘tour-diary’ is a photoblog and place for random thoughts, adventures and craziness, tying in social-media profiles and a more rounded approach to communicating outside of the official website. My aim for the site was to put the focus on the photos primarily, so a two column blog works perfectly for this application.

Website Specifics:

• Wordpress (CMS)
• Therapy Theme (by WooThemes) completely customised from the original
• Custom logo and graphics on all pages
• Integrated Gravatar and Thumbnail support for the sidebar tabber
• Management of a large amount of content (stories, media, video, tagging)

Interview with Sean O’Brien

Sean O’Brien is the number 1 ranking Olympic and Formula class windsurfer in Australia and is ranked 11th in the world. Sean has been capturing the world’s attention as he competes in Europe and Australia throughout the year. With a psychology degree Sean has mastered the mental science of competing but for those of us not so familiar with the art of windsurfing so much more knowledge is required including aerodynamics, sailing and meteorology.

So let’s take a look at what it takes for Sean to be a world champion in his sport in this two part interview. Whatever your sport there is always something you can learn from athletes. Sean O’Briens general attitude of excellence is contagious and can help us with our own day to day decisions in life.

Gabrielle Reilly: We try to analyze champion attributes here for us all to use in our own lives (noticed you have a psychology degree so sure you can relate). What do you think makes you the best at what you do and how much of it is mental?

SEAN O’BRIEN: My sport of windsurfing is extremely mental and the ones who can apply their knowledge and understanding of the “science” behind the sport just as much as the physical side usually do the best on the race course. I liken windsurfing racing to Formula One racing except that you have don’t have a team of engineers behind you; you are the sole engineer and mechanic. Each year, new equipment is designed and sold to the public and there are always new developments in equipment and performance. It’s our job to test the new equipment against last year¡’s equipment and then try the multitude of combinations of settings and tuning ideas to find the fastest gear around the course. On top of that, we are allowed (to some extent) to do custom modifications to the equipment so I am often spending a lot of time in the workshop designing modifications to our equipment and tinkering with new ideas.

On top of the physical side of the sport, racing windsurfers involves having to have a deep understanding of meteorology, fluid dynamics, aerodynamics as well as an in-depth knowledge of complex sailing tactics. There is a lot of books written about all these topics, but none of them are specific to windsurfing, so I’ve spent a lot of time over the years reading books and working out ways to apply the information to windsurfing. Having completed a Psychology degree and studied a little bit of Biomedical Science at University, I have a good appreciation of the scientific research model and I believe that¡’s given me a very analytical and methodical approach to learning about my sport. Recently I’ve started a website called www.carbonsugar.com where I’ve been writing scientific articles about board design, sailing tactics and using modern technology in windsurfing training this has been a good way for me to consolidate my knowledge and I’ve found by writing things down I can commit all the things I am reading to memory and the knowledge becomes a “reflex” out on the race course.

Windsurfing racing can be difficult at times to piece all the different aspects of the sport together. No matter how hard you train at the gym or on the water you can still be beaten if you don’t pick the weather changes on the day or if you haven’t tuned your equipment to perfection for that day’s conditions. Because we are racing in different parts of the world we often come across new weather phenonemons that don’t exist in the parts of the world I live and so there can also be an element of chance on top of all the calculated plans you make on race day. That’s what makes the sport so exciting for me; having to be prepared for absolutely anything that mother nature can throw at you on the race course.

Gabrielle Reilly: What training (if you can call playing around in the ocean “training”) do you do to achieve such great results?

SEAN O’BRIEN: I basically have two phases of training as I live half a year in Australia and half a year in Europe. In Europe, I’m on the Pro Tour and travelling all the time so I don’t get access to gyms and I can’t always have my bike with me, so I’m usually sailing a lot more (7 days a week with usually 4-5 hours a day on the water) and just doing some light running to stay flexible. I do a small amount of strength work (just excercises with my own bodyweight) to maintain my strength, as I’ve usually done a heavy gym program before arriving to get strong for the Tour. When I’m in Australia, I don’t live as close to the beach and the conditions aren’t always perfect so I’m doing a lot more training in the gym and cross training by cycling, swimming and also playing some other sports like indoor soccer and touch-football to keep mixing it up. I use the time in Australia to set out a more long-term program of strength building and tapering to get ready for Europe the following season.

The windsurfing part of the training is actually interesting, because I have to divide the time up between testing and actually training skills. At the beginning of the season we get new boards and sails so I have to do a lot of tuning and testing to get the new equipment dialed in and also work with my fin sponsors to find the right fin characteristics to work on the new boards. I usually do all the testing of gear by myself using GPS units to track speeds and angles and then analyzing the data on a computer at home. This can either take a few weeks to do, or a few months to do depending on conditions as you need to test all your gear combinations in ALL types of weather conditions. Once the gear is dialed in I can go back to regular training which is more just fitness training on the water and working on technique and fundamental sailing tactics with my coach.

I guess you could say the summer in Australia is my “off season” as I’m only doing National Events in Australia which are non-professional events and I see it as a bit of an opportunity to do less sailing as I’m usually burnt out after 6-months of sailing nearly every day in Europe. When I arrive in Europe to get ready for the start of the Pro Tour, its business time and my training goes in to overdrive.

Gabrielle Reilly: We look forward to bringing you part two of Sean O’Brien’s interview next month.