Stephanie Gilmore in control heading into Maui Pro

Winning her first surfing world championship was easier for rookie Stephanie Gilmore than finding the words to express it.

“I’m absolutely over the moon, and I’m just at a loss for words …” the 19-year-old Gilmore acknowledged after winning the then-Association of Surfing Professionals World Championship title at Honolua in 2007, the first rookie to accomplish the feat. “I honestly can’t describe it.”

Eleven years later, as the now-30-year-old Australian and six-time world champion returns to the Valley Isle for the Beachwaver Maui Pro scheduled to start Sunday and run through Dec. 6, no longer do the words or the victories seem to come with much difficulty.

Gilmore is No. 1 ranked on the World Surf League women’s championship tour, the four-year-old successor to the ASP, and is in pursuit of a milestone seventh world championship.

The Honolua stop, with its picturesque cliffside setting, marks the 10th and final event of the year on the WSL women’s championship tour and brings with it a showdown between Gilmore and the U.S.’s Lakey Peterson for the championship.

According to WSL number crunchers, Gilmore, who has three event championships and 61,175 points this year, will win the crown with a third place — or better — finish. But should Gilmore wind up fifth — or worse — then the second-ranked Peterson, who has two wins and 54,260 points, must win the event to force a surf-off for the year’s crown.

Carissa Moore, Hawaii’s highest-ranked competitor, is in fourth (44,235 points) and out of the running for a fourth world title this year, as is third-ranked (44,770 points) Tatiana Weston-Webb of Kauai, who now competes for Brazil.

Hawaii surfers Bethany Hamilton, Alana Blanchard, Summer Macedo and Zoe McDougall have gained entry as wild-card or injury replacements.

For Peterson, the highest-ranked American on either championship tour at this point, it is an opportunity for a breakthrough first world championship.

Meanwhile, the focus is on a seventh world title that would elevate Gilmore to the echelon of being one of just three pro surfers to ascend to that level. Layne Beachley had seven between 1998 and 2006 and Kelly Slater 11 between 1992 and 2011.

Gilmore’s fondness for Honolua, with its signature right-handed barrels and walls, is both long standing and deep. “I remember qualifying for the world tour in 2006 and the first thing that I thought of was Honolua Bay,” Gilmore said after the 2014 championship. “I hadn’t even been there yet, but I remember thinking, ‘When I get on Tour in 2007, I’m going to fall in love with Honolua Bay. I’m going to win the event and it is going to be the best thing ever.’ ”

And it managed to get even better with each succeeding year and trophy she hoisted there. Gilmore repeated as world champ in 2008 and ’09.

Gilmore told ESPN back then, “I remembered those feelings every year when we came back to surf (there).”

Then the tour took a five-year absence from Honolua before returning in 2014, when Gilmore, similarly re-energized, managed to win her most recent crown.

Small wonder Gilmore likes to say she feels like she has a “relationship with this place, this wave.”

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.