In one of our first glimpses of the heavyweight hammers being thrown down in Livigno for the Nine Knights, it’s a battle of Nordic as Halldór Helgason faces up against Kevin Backström in the Monster Showdown. 

Now we’ve seen the sketches of the course, and we’ve seen the preview video, but this gives us our first proper glimpse of the Mottolino madness being sent. Halldór’s front 5 off-the-toes is a Petter Kristiansen styled manoeuvre – there’s something about toeside front 5s that just do it for us. No idea why, but they just do.

That said, Kevin’s front 7 tail isn’t to be snubbed at either, especially considering the creative use of transition from the riders this early in the game. As organiser Nico Zacek put it on the first day “This is the worst day of week” – in regards to how many lines there were still to be found.

Now we reckon Halldór’s clinched this one really. But you can get involved with the action as well if your a hashtagger of this world. All you have to do is hashtag #monstershowdown with either #kevin or #halldor to cast your vote into the murky waters of judging.