No. 6 - Maria Sharapova

Sorry Maria, but our readers have decided there will be no Hottest Female Athlete three-peat for you. The tennis superstar must now relinquish her crown, at least for 2009, as she comes in at No. 6.

Maria Sharapova Photo Gallery

Since bursting onto the tennis scene as a 17-year-old following her upset win over Serena Williams in the 2004 Wimbledon final, Maria Sharapova has arguably become the world’s most famous female athlete.

The No. 1 ranking in the world and two more Grand Slam titles would follow (2006 U.S. Open, 2008 Australian Open), but her game has failed to fully recover from shoulder surgery in late 2008 that kept her out of competition for 10 months.

One of Sharapova’s best tournaments in 2009 was at the Rogers Cup in Toronto, where she lost in the final to another blonde Russian, Elena Dementieva.

By December 2009, she had worked her ranking back up to No. 15, but it remains to be seen whether her best tennis is still in front of her.

More on Maria:

- The most searched-for athlete on Yahoo! in both 2005 and 2008.

- In April 2005, People named her one of the 50 most beautiful celebrities in the world.

- In 2006 Maxim ranked Sharapova the hottest athlete in the world for the fourth consecutive year.

- In 2006 she appeared in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

- Since Feb. 2007 has been a United Nations Development Project Goodwill Ambassador, concerned specifically with efforts in Chernobyl to recover from the 1986 nuclear disaster.

- In 2008, Forbes named her the world's highest-paid female athlete, earning US$26 million.