As a Professional Athlete myself, I’m always interested to see what other athletes are doing to promote themselves on the internet. I published the first Top 25 Pro Athlete Websites list over a year ago which became a very popular resource for athlete website design on the web.

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 …

My recent redesign of AUS120.com™ has turned a few heads and is currently being showcased in a small competition run by WooThemes.com. Each week two websites built on the same theme run head-to-head in a voting competition to see which has the best looking design. You can vote for my site here by clicking this link and scrolling half way down the page to the voting poll. UPDATE: I have won the competition!!! Check the results on this link.

Thanks to everyone who voted and for WooThemes.com for picking out my site. The site is built on ‘Aperture’ theme by WooThemes.

For the past 6-months I have been working as an affiliated ‘Woo Worker’ with the well known WordPress Theme company, WooThemes. As a Woo Worker I provide custom theme modifications and tweaks, site styling and graphical work for those who’ve purchased a theme from WooThemes. This week I was interviewed by Adii as part of an ongoing series of interviews with the other WooThemes workers. You can read a transcript of the entire interview by ‘reading more’ of this article or head on over to the WooThemes blog to read the full interview and post a comment.

1. Tell us a little about yourself, your design / development skills and how this translates to your (freelancing) business.

Maybe I’m a bit different to some of the other workers; when I’m not on a computer I’m usually at the beach or on a plane, travelling, training and competing on the international Windsurfing Pro Tour. I’ve been racing professionally for about 5 years but have had a relationship with computers ever since Commander Keen arrived in 1990. I’m currently 25, and reside in the Netherlands for half the year, and in Australia the other half. I studied a few months of ‘Communication Design’ (basically a course in using websites and digital media to communicate) but then ended up with a Psychology/Biomedical Science degree and plan to study Medicine if I ever stop going to the beach. So I’m not classically trained too well in computers but I feel this have given me a more ‘outside the square’ look at design and coding as I’ve taught myself, I don’t really conform to a certain style.

I started out work mainly building websites for friends and for companies/organisations/clubs within the windsurfing world, so I’ve always been more interested in building ‘graphically’ more beautiful sites with lots of images, graphics and working with brighter colours as that fits the tempo for ‘sporting’ websites. Since my beginnings I’ve built websites for all sorts of businesses and individuals, but I guess my underlying passion still lives with sport related projects.

I have a manager who looks after my publicity/promotion/sponsorship needs whilst I’m in Europe, but I do all my promotion/media work myself when I’m in Australia. As a result, I’ve taken a keen interest in teaching myself the ropes of marketing, promotion, media correspondence and creating sponsorship proposals for my windsurfing. Now, with my webdesign work I feel I can pass on a lot of that knowledge to clients and somewhat advise them a little about branding and marketing through their websites – especially for athletes. Just recently I’ve built sites for an Australian Olympic sailor and an American Baseball player and also worked with them on some ideas on ways to create a ‘brand’ of themselves and how to promote/live through that brand on the internet.

Having recently started working with WooThemes, I find the scope of sites I am working on is vastly different to the simply ‘sporting’ ones I started out with, but this has also been an interesting and great added challenge to my work as a freelancer.

2. What is your favourite theme by WooThemes? And why?

I think right now it is Aperture, because I’m currently using it to revamp my windsurfing campaign website (www.AUS120.com). It got some really slick features but aside from that the layout is very square and symmetrical so it’s been really easy and efficient to completely cut it apart and revamp it!

3. So you’re an Affiliated Woo Worker, right? What does this actually mean to you and what does the “job” basically entail?

The important thing it means to me is that I know what I’m getting myself in to every time I reply to a clients request for help. Originally, if a client approached me wanting to get a premium theme modified and I’d never used that theme before, I’d have to ‘guess’ what was possible within the framework of the theme and blindly get involved in to projects that sometimes were great, but other times were awful (like when you discover you basically have to re-write the entire code of a ‘premium’ theme that was written by an amateur coder!). All the Woo Themes are built on the same framework and generally speaking most of the Woo guys have similar styles of writing code, so when somebody comes to me with a request and I’ve never used that particular theme before, I know exactly what I am getting myself in to, and can give a more accurate quote in terms of price and the time it will take to complete.

The end result is basically I am probably charging the end-clients less than years previous, getting things done quicker because I am so used to the Woo coding and also able to finish more jobs in a shorter timeframe which is good for my hip-pocket 

4. How has working with WooThemes influenced your business and / or earnings as a web designer / developer?

Starting working as a Woo Worker completely changed the way I’ve been working as a designer and also how I schedule my workload to fit in with my ‘other’ job; being a professional windsurfer. Previously, I’d been only building sites from scratch or doing heavy modifications of themes for clients. Each project may take 2-5 weeks and I always found myself up against deadlines and having to constantly spend time on the phone/Skype etc with the client rather than working at my own pace. Since starting as a Woo Worker I’ve noticed most people are coming to me wanting only small modifications (move this up here, or change this colour to here etc) or customising plugins they’ve downloaded (eg, forums like bbPress or Simple:Press) to fit in with their WooTheme colours. As a result, I can do 10 or so jobs a week rather than one big project for a month. So the end result is actually that I’m working with a lot more clients on smaller scale projects which is a lot less stressful but also allows me to fit in all the other millions of things I have to do each day.

The other cool thing with working with more people all the time is I’m constantly “meeting” new people (maybe just by email but sometimes by phone/Skype or in the “real” life version) and am having a lot more fun working – less stress mean I can get more done!

5. Would you recommend WooThemes over other, alternative free / premium WordPress themes? If yes, why?

Of course. For a number of reasons. Firstly, you guys have much more themes than any Premium Theme company out there and have more people involved with the theme/support process which is important. I’ve done some work previously with other premium themes and the end result I always find is there is usually little to no support floating around after you purchase the theme. Sure, they have a forum or such, but its usually just the one designer replying to queries and often they’ll have a 5-6 day period between responses and the nature of the internet is that everyone wants everything IMMEDIATELY. So waiting 5 days for a support request is not an option for most people!

Another thing is actually having us Woo Workers. What a great idea! It gives us freelancers a great opportunity to be part of something big, but it also gives the customers an opportunity to get custom work done by designers experienced in the Woo code. I’m not sure any other theme company has this luxury, and I know the designers of premium themes get indundated with requests for custom modifications which I’m sure they can’t attend to all of, which in turn again frustrates the customers!

The final thing is the reassurance you have if you were to purchase a subscription. Do you really know if you signed up for 6 months whether another smaller company would still “exist” 6 months down the track and whether they’ll still be having the creative output to create new themes for all that time? We at least know with WooThemes, the creative juices won’t be running out as there’s a multitude of designers and also many upcoming and current collaborations with other designers for themes. We also know how passionate they are in their online work, with all of them blogging on their own personal sites and on other social media outlets; there’s a sense of pride that you can see that none of them would allow the quality of their work to drop – out of sheer embarrassment to themselves and the public that follow them online. That’s reassuring 

6. What do you think about the ease-of-use and customizability of our themes?

The major case in point is that all the themes are built on the same framework, grid system and essentially all have similar features. Often I get clients asking about modifying a theme that I haven’t worked with before, but I can answer most of their questions before even looking at the code because I know what to expect with each theme. As I mentioned earlier, this means I usually end up charging less because there’s less time I spend trying to work through the code to make changes and I can get work done much quicker and look after more clients in a shorter period of time. Basically, case in point, with WooThemes, everything comes up Millhouse!

7. Anything else that you’d like to add? Maybe a little compliment or something?

One thing I’ve always been impressed with about WooThemes is their complete transparency. Nearly all the guys (Adii especially), blog or design or tweet on their own personal sites, independent of their Woo work which means you can actually see what these guys are up too in their spare time a little bit and outside of their Woo lives. There’s always a familiarity and ‘comfortable’ association you feel with companies where they are very transparent and open about their ideas and lives – and that familiarity leads customers to better trust and usually to better end sales results.

The reason I like this way of doing business so much is because I’ve grown up in a world of Professional Sports, where EVERYBODY on the tour is the enemy and you share no secrets about gear, training, lifestyle with anyone in case they copy your ideas and beat you on the racetrack. I’ve always felt that is a poor way to play sport as I’m interested in the grass-roots part of the sport as well as the professional side, and I find the non professional guys in the sport never learn how to get any better because none of the pros share any of their secrets. That’s the same in business I feel, the customer never understands why decisions are made that effect them, so the end result is they are usually more reluctant to give you their hard earned money.

I’ve always followed Adii’s adventures on his site because he’s always been the most transparent entrepreneur that I’ve come across on the internet. Reading his blog actually inspired me a few years back to start www.CarbonSugar.com, a website I’ve started to share ALL the secrets of pro-windsurfing, much to the horror of all my competitors! Haha.

I can’t say I’m one of the people who regularly visits WordPress.org - who actually does? (unless you’re about to download the latest version for a new project) However I was digging through the forums recently and discovered they now have a Showcase of WordPress websites there. Seeing as its relatively new, I figure they haven’t been berated with 1000′s of submissions a day like any good CSS gallery usually probably is. So I decided to send in my personal windsurfing website I designed: www.AUS120.com. Low and behold, I had an incredible spike in traffic on the first day it popped up, peaking at around 6,000 unique hits in the first 24 hour period. Considering my website is targetted mainly towards the windsurfing world and for my sponsors within the windsurfing world (a very niche group) – this was great publicity and I’d recommend to anyone to submit their new website to the Showcase. Albeit the site needs to be pretty nice to get selected …

Checkout AUS120.com on the WordPress Showcase.

As a Professional Athlete myself, I’m always interested to see what other athletes are doing to promote themselves on the internet. One would think that with the amount of money flying around in most high-profile sports these days, the highest earning athletes on the planet would surely have the slickest looking websites; this is not always the case. What shocked me more is that I could only find 2-3 athlete websites using WordPress as a CMS. Suffice to say there are some great athlete websites out there but they are in the few, so I’ve compiled a list of my favourites for you everyone to check out.

I didn’t really want to join the list of billions on the web posting a ‘my favourite blog designs of 2008′ article which most likely they ripped from SmashingMagazine anyhow, but spending a few hours today doing some research I’ve discovered that there are absolutely zero resources on the web to list professional athletes websites (I got the list mostly from googling famous sports heroes and trying to find their websites) and it seems the more famous the athlete, the less they spend on their website budget (mostly I would think, because the internet is not a great marketing tool for sports compared to Television and Print media – sorry guys!).

Anyhow, I thought I could be the first to publish a list like this featuring athletes, and I would hope with a few Diggs from you guys out there this could be become a valuable resource for webdesigners who have been given the task to build the new Roger Federer website. So enjoy and read on to check the sites!

Click on the screencaps to go direct to the athletes website [ websites are ranked in order of best to 'least best']

1. Rafael Nadal
This is just a cool website, period. Big typography with a flash section in the middle; easy to navigate content and the grungy/come modern style of the site really suits Rafael’s playing style on the tennis court. The current World #1 Tennis Star has certainly made an impression on the web also.

2. Maria Sharapova
Another tennis star tops the list, this time the smoking hot Russian and former World #1 Maria Sharapova. Although I’m not personally a fan of full flash sites – this one does the trick. There’s almost no loading time and no horrendous intro that is common in full flash sites. The content is easy to navigate and the layout is clean and to the point. Great website!

3. Natalie Gulbis
This American born LPGA (women’s golf) superstar has a really cool website. Kind of reminds me of the old Hemingway theme for WordPress in its layout, but the website is full CSS and is nice and clean whilst keeping a ‘girly’ theme with the colours which some female sports stars don’t seem to want to portray. Golf never looked this hot!

4. Andy Roddick (using WordPress!)
Just using WordPress alone would have been enough to put American Tennis superstar Andy Roddick up the list, but the fact its actually a Revolution Theme mod and done very well makes it even cooler. Relatively clean layout (a little cluttered, but that seems to be the style for sports stars in America) and easy to navigate and not to mention – NOT using flash! Props to Andy!

5. Kobe Bryant
Nicknames are cool and so calling your website KB24 gets a tick in my book. The rebel American NBA basketball star has a very cool light-on-dark website with a nice woody textured background. The auto-play flash video at the top takes a while to load but once you’re past that the website is a head-turner.

6. Alex Ovechkin (WordPress!)
This site popped up on the WooThemes.com Showcase recently as it’s a mod of their VibrantCMS theme. A very cool featured slider is the first thing you’ll see then the site is kept very clean and simple with the blog and other content. Not a big NHL Ice Hockey fan but this website is really cool!

7. Kimi Räikkönen
Again I’m not a fan of full flash sites, however if you can manage to do them without a lame and annoying intro and take the load time down to almost zilch, then you get a tick from me. I’m a big Formula1 racing fan so I have to pay tribute to one of my driving heroes. The site is easy to navigate and really fits with the persona of the Ferrari brand’s own website – which is important when someone’s paying you +$30 million a season to drive their cars.

8. Amanda Beard
Unfortunately, this smoking hot American Olympic swimmer was beaten to the .com of her name by someone else so she had to settle for the .net extension. This is another full flash site (seems to be common with athletes) however its very clean and has a fairly small amount of information on it so it doesn’t feel cluttered. The menu at the bottom is nice and using big pictures of Amanda as the background is fine in my book!

9. Dave Mirra
Dave Mirra is one of my favourite Pro BMX riders and is widely regarded the best street BMX rider ever. I love his website because it goes straight to the action – latest pictures and videos are available without clicking a ‘media’ gallery or such. Only drawback is the background is a 1.76MB .png file (surely it could be smaller, its just a texture!). A cool grungy website for a BMX’er is a job well done.

10. Gretchen Bleiler
Snowboarding, what a cool sport. Gretchen was a silver medalist at the Torino Winter Olympics (I remember watching her compete) and this site definitely sums up what I think about when I think of snowboarding. Big colourful menus, confusing layout and big colourful photos of Gretchen airborne. Although its not the most practical website, it certainly sums up ‘hot’, ‘snowboarding’, ‘girl’ all in one hit – which is the aim of a personal website of a pro snowboarder.

11. Shane Warne
Now this isn’t exactly a personal website, more of a personal website of Shane’s next gig after sport (professional Poker playing) – however, I must give testament to one of the greatest Australian Cricket players on the planet as I’ve met Shane personally a few times and he’s a pretty nice guy. The website is really clean and functional and just wreaks of Shane goodness.

12. Çaĝla Kubat
Don’t ask me how to pronounce her name, but this is the hottest girl in windsurfing at the moment. She’s from Turkey, a professional model and now a professional windsurfer. I have the luxury of seeing this girl on tour quite a bit through the year. Her website again is full flash, but its clean and minimal and able to distinguish between her sporting and modelling career achievements.

13. Ronaldo
I love it when athletes flash their cash, and the Brazilian soccer megastar is no exception. This awesome flash enabled (mostly CSS) website is available in 4 languages and features the colours of his native Brazil as well as a really cool signature logo of Ronaldo’s. The website just screams soccer superstar – and does the job so nicely as well as giving good visual cred to his sponsors (ie, Nike).

14. Tony Hawk
The world’s most famous skateboarder needs no introduction and neither does his website. Some would say this website is cluttered and ugly, but I’m impressed by designers who can accurately capture the essense of the sport the athlete is playing. When I think of Skateboarding or Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4, I think cluttered, messy, colour, grunge-graphics and lots of advertising – which is exactly what this website does best. Well done.

15. James Courtney
Last year I was a guest speaker at a lunch for athletes and spoke alongside James Courtney. He’s an Australian racecar driver and his website eeks of clean racing goodness. The colours are cool (green websites are hard to pull off) and I like his cleancut JC logo. The website features an update of the next race circuit on the tour which is a good plug for the race tour as well as for James himself.

16. Björn Dunkerbeck
Dunkerbeck is the greatest windsurfer ever, period. He won 12 Overall World Titles in a row – a feat which will never be topped I reckon. I’ve raced Björn a few times over the years and he is a true champion. His full flash website is a little difficult to read the content, but it makes up for it with some truly amazing windsurfing photography as his backgrounds. The black on blue content/background is a nice touch also. I don’t like the autoplay music but you wouldn’t say it to his face – he ain’t called The Terminator for nothing!

17. Antoine Albeau
If anyone could top Björn Dunkerbeck’s winning streak in windsurfing – its this guy. Antoine is from France and now that Björn has had his day, he’s winning everything that’s left to win. His site is kind of a copy of Björn’s I feel (that’s why he’s one behind) but I do like the graphics and the elephant on the splash page (Antoine is nicknamed little elephant or something I think) is so cute. Windsurfing rocks!

18. Daniela Hantuchova
Tennis players seemed to have figured out how to make a presence on the web (this is the 3rd in this list of 25). Admittedly, its usually the more attractive female players who make it and this Slovenian girl is no exception. This website is simple and clean and the top bar graphics are nice. The colours are a little “whack” for a tennis player but that’s the only drawback I think.

19. Wojtek Brzozowski
This Polish World Champion windsurfer is actually one of my rivals in the racing discipline of windsurfing I compete in. He’s a pretty nice guy to boot too! This is actually the 4th version of his website (I preferred v3.0) but its very clean and the colours are easy on the eye. Its available in 2 languages and has a decent amount of content on there. Only thing missing is videos …

20. Sasha Cohen
This American ice-skater is a good example of how to turn an Olympic Silver Medal into a long career in the public eye; she’s now a tv-star and advertising spokeswoman. The splash page to her website is horrible, however once you get past the purple you find this clean, cutesy, white website which is nicely layed-out with a left-alignment. The site really fits well with her youthful teen look.  

21. Patrik Diethelm
Although the single column layout is a little strange on this site, I love the big windsurfing backgrounds on this Italian Pro Windsurfer and board designer’s website. It takes a little while to load (my pet hate with full-flash sites) however the backgrounds are just awesome and the content is easy to read, spaced out into each topic’s own block.

22. Allison Shreeve
Allison is a good windsurfing friend of mine from Australia and happens to be 3x World Champion in Windsurfing. Her website layout is nice – I like the colours matching with the water of the top graphic and the fact that the front page gets STRAIGHT to the point of what the site is about. Although I prefer CSS menus rather than images the site is really clean and fits with Allison’s squeaky clean image – good job! 

23. Fernando Alonso
Another great Formula1 driver, this time from Spain. This website actually has a few things I hate about it, but if you wait for the flash section on the top left to play through you will find this AMAZING hand drawn image of Alonso (which I captured in the screenshot) which was the final point that made me include it in this list. I think the scrollbar moving to the right of the content must be an error with the coding because it looks terrible and the menu is kinda blurry, but otherwise the website gets the point across. 

24. David Beckham
You really disappoint me here Becks. You’re one of the biggest names in the sporting arena worldwide and you’re getting paid more than most could even imagine, yet your website is soooooooo 2002. Its like a FashionTV ripoff.  That being said, the site is clean and the information is presented in a very clearcut way. I do like the flip menus being used on the site so Becks did make my list of Top 25 (barely).

25. Serena Williams
Don’t click past the splash screen on this American Tennis Star’s website – it gets REALLY ugly after this sleek and subtle splash page. This picture of Serena screams glam and I think it really fits with the layout and colours of the splash page. Pity about the website inside, but I included it because I was so impressed with the splash.

… and finally, the one you’ve all been waiting for …

Worst Website Award Goes To …

Roger Federer (worst website ever!)
My god this site makes me want to stab myself in the eye with a pick-axe. Where do I start? Is it the awful colours, the 1997 layout, the horrendous fonts being used or the shear lack of ‘presence’ this website gives. For the man who’s undoutably the highest paid tennis player on the circuit right now and even has his face on a postage stamp in his home in Switzerland, I’m fairly disappionted with this site in comparison to his main rival Rafael Nadal’s who featured at No.1 spot in my list.

My contact details are here if you need a new website makeover Mr Federer.   

Parting Notes

I hope you enjoyed my list and 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!

One more for the road …

And Finally… this is MY personal website.
I’d be interested to see what you guys think of my personal website. Its using WordPress and I’ve tried to make it as graphic as possible while keeping a clean layout. AUS120 is my international sail number for windsurfing for those wondering what the heck the url is all about …