Layne Beachley AO (b. 1972), former surfer and businesswoman, is the world's most successful female professional surfer. As a girl growing up in the Sydney coastal suburb of Manly, Beachley excelled in several sports, but elected to focus on surfing at the age of sixteen. With a negligible amateur record, she turned professional in 1989, and by the time she was twenty she was ranked number six in the world. Over the course of the 1990s she persevered with her training regime through debilitating illness to triumph at the World Championships in 1998. She won the same title for the next five consecutive years, between 1999 and 2003, and took a seventh title in 2006, her seventeenth year on the tour. Her other women's surfing records include riding the biggest wave ever, gaining the most world championship tour victories (twenty-nine) and earning the most money on the circuit. In 2003, when she was Australian Female Athlete of the Year, she founded the Aim for the Stars Foundation for the academic, community and cultural improvement of young Australian women. The following year, she was included on the list of Australia's Most Beautiful Exports. She was inducted into the USA Surfers' Hall of Fame and earned a stone on the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame in 2006. That year, she initiated the richest event in women's surfing history, the Havaianas Beachley Classic at Manly. Inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2011, Beachley is now chair of Surfing Australia, a powerful motivational speaker and has served as ambassador for various charities and causes including the National Breast Cancer Foundation, UNICEF and Planet Ark.
