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After a fairly lengthy furlough, "Who's Hot, Who's Not" is back with a special Independence Day edition and is ready to analyze the best and worst that female athletes have to offer. But first let me appologize for the inconsistency of this usually weekly post. Something called E3 and the immediate aftermath kind of got in the way for a while, but I hope to be delivering this column weekly on Saturday's from now on.
Who's Hot?
This week's league leader in hotness is none other then snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler, which many of you may already recognize from the column's logo. However, despite seeing her in said logo, many of you may have never heard of her before. Aside from being an incredibly talented snowboarder she's also got a banging body. I serioulsy don't know if there's anything hotter than a good looking girl who can snowboard. If there are any skiers/boarders out there reading this, you know what I'm talking about.
Vitals:
- Born April 10, 1981 in Toledo, OH
- Is 5'5" and stunning
- Is a professional halfpipe snowboarder
About Gretchen...
Bleiler aspired to compete in the Winter X Games from a very young age, and found her passion in snowboarding at age 11 (1992). She has been riding ever since and became professional in 1996. Among her accomplishments, she jump-started the
invert revolution for female riders as the first to land a Crippler 540 in competition, and won more halfpipe competitions in 2003, 2005 and 2006 than any other female snowboarder. In the pre-Olympic season she won four of the five US Olympic halfpipe qualifiers and is also a three-time X Games gold medalist, most recently winning the superpipe at Winter X Games XII.
How she got hotter...
Bleiler expanded her career into snowboard and outerwear design, through Oakley and K2 Snowboarding, designing her own signature outerwear line for Oakley, and participating in the K2 Alliance, which develops and tests women's products, as well as working on the graphics for several K2 Boards.
When she is not competing, Bleiler enjoys surfing, mountain biking, interior design and fashion. She is also active in several environmental organizations, including the Aspen Snomass Save Snow campaign, and stopglobalwarming.org.
-- Biography courtesy of wikipedia.org
Boy can she get up there. I bet it's not the only thing she's good at getting up.
Who's Not
In honor of the Williams sisters competing against each other in Wimbledon, I present to you this week's league lagger in hotness, Venus Williams. Now, Venus is no doubt one of the best active female tennis players in the world, but in a sport riddled with gorgeous athletes, she stands out in a category of her own and it's not a good one.
Vitals:
- Born June 17, 1980 in Lynwood, CA
- She's a lengthy 6'1" and weighs about 160 lbs
- Her all-time career record is 534-125 and she has accumulated $22,749,613 in prize money.
About Venus...
Venus Ebony Starr Williams is a former World No. 1 American tennis player who, as of May 12, 2009, is ranked World No. 3. She has won the Wimbledon singles title the last two years and is the reigning Wimbledon and Australian Open doubles champion. Since joining the Women's Tennis Association tour in 1994, Williams has won 56 titles, which includes 17 Grand Slam titles -- seven in singles, eight in women's doubles, and two in mixed doubles. She has also won 3 gold medals, two in Sydney and one in Bejing.
