Not exactly the most extravagant photo shoot you’ve ever seen, but one that paid plenty mainstream exposure.

Alana Blanchard

Age: 24
From: Kauai, Hawaii
Best quote: “My butt is my best asset”

Swimwear designer, girlfriend to world junior champ Jack Freestone, WCT competitor, the saucy Kauain bombshell has been in the modelling game longest, starting her career at the ripe age of 15.

Surfing by its nature not necessarily lending itself to most traditional ‘feminine’ forms of woman, she’s considered by many to be the first female surfer to have transcended the surfing tomboy stereotype.

Notorious for her skimpy bikinis and duckdives, Alana’s stratospheric rise in popularity over the last few years owes itself to two main factors: mainstream press (voted the ‘Sexiest woman in sport’ by Men’s Health magazine in 2011 and featuring in Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition in 2013) and some mean social media skills. Yes, with close to 900,000 followers on Instagram (half of whom are reported to live in North Africa), Alana tops the social media surfing charts by a long shot.

However, in contrast to others, when pressed by Surfline on whether she thought skimpy bikinis actually lifted her profile in surfing, she prefers to play cautious.

“I don’t know. Girl surfers are always in bikinis. I guess it just depends on how you wear them and who you are. I’m sure I got a little more attention when I was younger, but if you look around pretty much all the girls are wearing tiny bikinis now…. I think as a girl it’s hard to be in this industry where they want you to look a certain way.”

And while Alana’s slipped on-and-off tour a handful of times in the last five or so years, she remains the sport’s undisputed reigning pinup girl. In fact since 2013 she now boasts her own Internet show on Network A, Surfer Girl (by the same name of the 1995 documentary featuring Wendy Botha).