This Italian pro tennis player won her first International Tennis Federation tournament in 2009 and made her Women’s Tennis Association debut a couple of years later in 2011. That same year, she reached the finals in Raleigh and closed the year with a total of 36 wins.
She won her first WTA title in 2015 and earned the highest ranking of her career – #26 – 3 years later. Giorgi is very active on her Instagram account, where she frequently posts photos of herself for her 237,000 followers, as well as on her official Facebook page which has 280,000 followers.
Alana Blanchard
Blanchard, like most surfers (and a lot of athletes, for that matter), risks her life pretty much every time she goes out in the water and does what she does. Surfers get injured every day – or worse, attacked by sharks, which actually happened to one of her friends right in front of her. But she didn't let that stop her. She got right back on the board and kept doing what she loves.
Besides being an incredible surfer, Alana Blanchard is also a swimwear model who appears in ads for Curl Swimwear, and she recently signed an endorsement deal with Reebok, as well. She also stays pretty active on her Instagram, where she has over 1.8 million followers.
Jennifer Lacy
Jennifer Lacy’s father, Lee, was a Major League Baseball player, so it makes sense that she would have chosen to go into athletics. It's in her blood, her genes, her birthright. After playing basketball during college at Pepperdine University, she joined the WNBA. During the off-season between 2008 and 2009, she went to China, where she played for Beijing Shougang.
In 2013, she was attacked by her ex-girlfriend, former WNBA player Chamique Holdsclaw, who poured gasoline on and shot into her car when she was in it. Luckily, she wasn’t injured during the attack, and Holdsclaw was arrested for the incident.
Marta Menegatti
This Italian pro-beach volleyball player has been playing her sport since before she even turned 10 years old. Talk about an early start! Now, she’s the proud holder of 2 golds, 7 silvers, and 7 bronze medals on the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour. In September of 2015, she and the rest of the Italian women’s national team won their first World Tour title.
For a while, she was dating another pro volleyball player from her country named Alex Rangheri but the two are reportedly no longer together. She stays very active on her Instagram, where she has nearly 50,000 followers.
Gabby Douglas
This amazingly talented professional gymnast was already winning medals at the age of 8, thanks to her older sister, who taught her how to do her first cartwheel when Gabby was just a toddler. She started training full-time at 14, and by 2010, she was earning gold medals in major competitions. 2012 was a huge year for her and the rest of the Fierce Five, who walked away from the Summer Olympics in London with the team gold.
Gabby also racked up one of her own, as the All-Around Gold Medalist. That made her the first African American in the history of the games to do so. She is currently training hard in anticipation of competing in Tokyo in 2020.