Alison Melder is a young, attractive lady who wears a bikini well, but she never won the Miss Bikini USA competition as she claimed. Melder became known last week when an investigation into Bobby Petrino’s phone records showed she exchanged several text messages with the fired Arkansas coach.
On a past modeling profile, Melder wrote “miss bikini usa 08” and “miss motorcycle mania 08” in the awards/credits section. She lied about the Miss Bikini USA 2008 part.
The Vice President and Chief Photographer for Miss Bikini USA emailed LBS to inform us that Melder did not win the competition. He also has no recollection of her even competing.
“I personally did the Arkansas event in August of ’08 and she WAS NOT there at all. ALL models that win MUST work with me and this girl did not. The winner from Arkansas in ’08 was a girl named Shirley and the over-all winner for Miss Bikini USA 2008 was Gia Allemand that went on to be on “The Bachelor,” he said in his email.
A quick look at the Bikini-USA website shows 16 women who received honors in connection with Miss Bikini USA 2008, none of whom are Alison Melder. They were so miffed with the false connection, they even wrote a long post on their website about the subject.
“While it is possible Ms. Melder may have won a local photo submission contest, we have no record of her winning or entering an official Bikini USA contest,” said Terri Dingle, part owner of the Bikini USA franchise.
Brian Pike also writes that “no Bikini-USA Staff photographer has any knowledge of Ms. Melder, and every Miss Bikini-USA Competition has a minimum of three Bikini-USA Staff Photographers on hand to work with, photograph and provide advice to all bikini models in their competitions.”
They figure that since she lied about being Miss Bikini USA 2008, she probably also lied about winning Miss Motorcycle Mania. That probably is the case. We thought it was odd that someone who had so much success in modeling would be working in politics only a few years later, and this could explain the disconnect.
Even if Melder never won any official awards, it still doesn’t change that Bobby Petrino was trading text messages with an attractive bikini model despite being married. That’s the real bottom line.
