Saturday, June 4, 2005 (Hossegor, France): Rounds one and two of the Rip Curl Venus Festival Trials were run beneath sunny skies at Hossegor, France today. A previously flat sea pulsed 3 to 5 foot (1.25m) sets through La Graviere.

Caroline Sarran (FRA) and Jessi Miley-Dyer (AUS) currently lead the field of 16; both girls won their rounds one and two heats today.

“We were really lucky to get a sunny day with beautiful conditions. It was four to five foot and pretty solid at low tide. I guess I just got the good waves and I surfed them well,” Sarran said.

“This is my fourth trials event this year, but I haven’t gotten through any so hopefully this’ll be the one.”

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Miley-Dyer, who currently sits in second on the World Qualifying Series (WQS), won her first wildcard into a WCT event earlier this year at the SPC Fruit Pro in Bells Beach. She is a favorite both at the Rip Curl Venus Festival Trials and to qualify for the World Championship Tour next year.

“I think it’s such a great opportunity for us girls to have a turn in a ‘CT event, because this is where we all want to be,” Miley-Dyer said. “To actually be on the WCT, surfing the first event of the year, and for it not to be your first event ever, is such an advantage. Surfing in a ‘CT is intimidating and scary. It’s what you’ve read about in magazines and seen in videos, so to find yourself suddenly there, you kind of go, 'Ohmigod, what am I doing?'."

Stephanie Gilmore knew what she was doing when she won the first WCT event of the season as a wildcard on the Gold Coast this year and wasted no time illustrating similar intentions in the first round today. Garnering a 9.0 score, the day’s highest, with the first wave she caught, Gilmore won her first round heat but placed second in round two. She is joined in equal third by former WCT surfers Marie Pierre Abgrall (FRA) and Julia Christian (USA) and celebrated European surfer, Emmanuelle Joly (FRA).

The round robin format throws four, four-girl heats in the water for rounds one through three. The surfers are shuffled each round so that they draw new opponents each time. Ten points are awarded for a 1st place heat finish, 2nd place will earn 7 points and 3rd place finishers receive 4 points. The surfer in 4th earns 1 point.

The top four high-point scorers will face each other in woman on woman heats in the semifinal and final rounds. The winner of the final will receive a wildcard into the Rip Curl Venus Festival WCT event slated to start Monday, June 6th.

A gala to get things rolling here at the Rip Curl Venus Festival will be held at the Safari Beach Club in Seignosse tonight. Parisian DJ’s "My Oh My", a two-girl act, will rock the decks at 8:30pm.

Round three, the semifinals and final of the trials will likely run tomorrow. A call will be made at 8:30am local time.