The four heats of the quarter finals of the women's Tampax Compak Fresh Pro WQS were held first thing on Thursday morning. The heats were exciting with the usual suspects devastating the competition. Despite peaky conditions, the highest wave scores so far in the comp were acheived.

Rip Curl rider Stephanie Gilmore, currently ranked third overall on the WQS rankings, has been ripping all week. Matched up against young French surfer Marie DeJean, Suelen Naraisa (BRA) and Marie Pierre Abgrall (FRA), Gilmore went wild and lodged an 18.70-point heat score – the best of the event so far. Her 9.70 and 9.00-point rides are the highest two of the week.

The third highest wave score this week was had by Gilmore's team mate and fellow Australian, Jessi Miley-Dyer. She scored 16.33 points to defeat her competitors by more than eight points each. Claudia Goncalves (BRA), Luana Papa (FRA) and Caroline Perret (FRA) all struggled to find waves and were outclassed by the powerful goofy-footer. The 20-year-old is now favourite to win Semi-Final 1 and compete yet another WQS Final.

Silviana Lima even though she turned up ten minutes late as her car broke down, easily won her heat with a 3.4 lead over South African Heather Clark in second place. With surfers like these, the semi-finals look to be an exciting and close contest.

Surfing over the last couple of days has been truly inspiring in the Men’s Rip Curl Boardmasters WQS contest- never again are we at Surfcore going to say it's too small to surf! These guys can still pull off at least 3 moves on a small wave likely to disappear when their back is turned.

Stephanie Gilmore ripping: