Friday brought with it Quarterfinals here in São Paulo, and after the surprise exits of yesterday’s big cull you could have been forgiven for thinking most of the drama was behind us: not so.

Morning saw Women’s Street kick off first, with both Spain’s Daniela Terol and France’s Lucie Schoonheere having to rally from broken first runs to come through with their second before crowd favourite Gabi Mazetto sparked proceedings to life in front of a spectacularly partisan Brazilian crowd with the strongest performance we have seen from her in a long time. She was denied a Front Feeble on the buzzer to end her second run, but was otherwise faultless and looks like she is enjoying a renaissance.

Most improved, even since Kitakyushu just before Christmas, was New Zealand’s Jessica Ready who is a tech machine right now, peppering her runs with Nollie 360 Flips, Nollie Heelflips and the ultra-rare Frontside Axle Stall Kickflip In. Rising standards mean higher risks, however, and both Funa Nakayama and Yumeka Oda took heavy slams during their moments in the sun. Two inevitable sides of the same skateboarding coin, unfortunately; Funa was able to rally and made it into semifinals by the skin of her teeth courtesy of a second run which she finished on fumes having stepped off the Field Of Play momentarily and improvising the tail end of her run by instinct. Yumeka was less fortunate, and unexpectedly missed the cut alongside compatriot Momiji Nishiya who had a quarterfinals to forget.

Men’s Park started later, and was characterised in the early heats by what seems like a collective Brazilian moment emerging. All the Brazilian team are on song here, with Kalani Konig, Luiz Mariano, Dan Sabino and Luigi Cini (Kickflip Stalefish Fakie!) all looking ridiculously poised and comfortable during their runs, and by heat 3 of 4 only Tom Schaar looked better. Physically more powerful than anyone else in his class, he has to contain his temptation to uber-blast but possesses an incredible internal gyroscope which allows him to tabletop Frontside 360 Stalefishes over the central flybox feature every single time without spinning out, somehow.

At this point, proceedings were interrupted by the approximate contents of the river Amazon falling out of the sky for the first time since the event began on Monday. When it abated, a volunteer army dried the skatepark in record time, allowing the action to resume for around an hour- before the sky doing likewise again, only more so.

Heat 4 of Men’s Park reconvened after the deluge with its own storylines for days. Pedro Barros lives to fight another day by the skin of his teeth (AKA 0.23 of a single point) with a final run which did just enough to qualify on the bubble spot of 16th, but had to wait for Tate Carew, Viktor Solmunde and Augusto Akio all to drop in subsequently with the intent of bumping him out of contention before he knew he was safe. In the end, though, it doesn’t matter how you survive- only that you do. Tomorrow is a new day.

Six of the last sixteen in Men’s Park semifinals here are Brazilian, which is about right.

The upsets were not confined to Park: as overcast day turned into overcast night, Brazil turned on the afterburners in Men’s Street, too.

There were several reversals of fortune, with usually bankable performers like Canada's Cordano Russell and Korea's Juni Kang unable to complete a run while previously mercurial talents like Filipe Mota and Gabryel Aguilar sailed through like it was just another day in the park.

Wallace Gabriel needed his second run to join them, but join them he did- along with Slovakia supreme tactician Riso Tury- and the superbly talented but not-always-lucky Japanese ripper Daiki Ikeda.

Add into that mix Australia’s Rome Collyer who almost bagged the run of his life at the first time of asking before falling off on a comparatively straightforward 360 Kickflip over the driveway as the buzzer went before pulling it all together with his last roll of the dice.

Heat 4 brought more carnage in terms of predictions as Japan's Yuto Horigome, Brazil's Giovanni Vianna and Colombia'sJhanka Gonzalez all hitting the skids while Japan's gifted but inconsistent Keyaki Ike glided through to semis for the first time in what is already his best WST result by some distance. Go figure.

In comparison to the chaos of the previous three quarterfinals, Women's Park rounded out the day in a more anticipated fashion, with each of the top three posting two complete runs each leaving no scope for ambiguity over their positions ont he leaderboard.

Spain's Naia Laso, on the other hand, had to wait until the last run of the day to book her place in the semifinals, and looked mightily relieved to have done so- accompanied by a spirited if not particularly tuneful rendition of The Clash's 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' by the kids in the stands who lapped up every single trick.

A gala day of skateboarding brought to a suitably fun conclusion. Bring on tomorrow.

Women's Street

Men's Street

Men's Park

Women's Park