Shark-girl Bethany tears it up

INSPIRATIONAL American surfer Bethany Hamilton is training on the Gold Coast as she chases her dream of competing in the world championship.

Hamilton, whose left arm was bitten off by a 3.5m tiger shark in 2003, tore into the 2m swell at Burleigh yesterday.

Gliding across the waves with style, the 17-year-old passed as a local before being spotted by a Bulletin photographer.

Hamilton is preparing for the Roxy Surf Festival at Phillip Island in Victoria later this month, an event on the ASP World Qualifying Series and a stepping stone to the top level ASP Women's World Tour.

She is currently ranked 41 and hopes to improve to 30 by the end of the season.

At just 13, the young Hawaiian was a US teenage surfing sensation -- but she was attacked while surfing in Hawaii.

A friend's father and her brother helped her paddle to shore safely, fashioning a tourniquet out of a surf leash below her shoulder.

If the shark had bitten 5cm further in, the attack would have been fatal.

Not one to let the devastating attack get in the way of her dreams, Bethany was back on the board within a week of her stitches being removed, just 10 weeks after the attack.

After teaching herself how to surf again with one arm, Hamilton made the finals of a top surfing competition three months later.

Then in January last year the shark attack survivor emerged as a genuine threat against top-seed surfers Stephanie Gilmore and European champion Alize Arnaud at last year's Roxy Surf Festival, clocking a combined score of 15.5 out of a possible 20.

Speaking not long after her recovery, Hamilton said the trickiest part of surfing with one arm was 'getting up and paddling'.

"For instance, say you're trying to do a push-up and you only have one arm, push-ups are hard with one arm," she said.

"Getting up on a board is kind of like that and try swimming with one arm, you'll go half the speed."

Since her miraculous recovery and return to her passion for surfing, Hamilton has become an inspiration to teens the world over.

In 2004, the devout Christian wrote her first book on the ordeal titled, Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family and Fighting to Get Back on the Board.

The book was written to encourage teenagers to 'tackle any obstacles in their lives'. It is being turned into a movie.