Who’s got the better skiers—Europe or the Americas? We’re about to find out at the 2016 Mora Banc Skier’s Cup.

Sixteen top skiers have arrived here at Granvalira, Andorra for the Mora Banc Skier’s Cup 2016 — the annual showdown between top skiers from Europe and the Americas to determine once and for all which side of the Atlantic has the best riders on the mountain.

Team captains Sage and Loïc: a huge amount of skiing talent on either side of this handshake, but who will lead their team to victory?

After a brief introduction to the event by organizers Nicolas Hale-Woods, Sverre Lillequist and Kaj Zackrisson, who explained that the purpose was to “have fun, but still win,” team captains Sage Cattabriga-Alosa (Americas) and Loïc Collomb-Patton (Europe, replacing an injured Richard Permin) took to the board to pick their starters in tomorrow’s Big Mountain competition.

Nicolas, Kai and Sverre explain the rules.

Team Europe: Stacked.

Team Americas: Equally stacked.

The format goes like this: the teams will compete in two separate events, Big Mountain and Backcountry Slopestyle. The Big Mountain segment goes off tomorrow, while BC Slopestyle is slated for Monday, February 1. In both contests the skiers get two runs each, riding head-to-head against an opponent from the other team. At the end of each head-to-head challenge, the judges selected by the team captains—Philou Poirier, Arnaud Rougener, and Sam Smoothy— decide which skier won the match-up based on overall impression. At the end of the day, whichever continent has won more head-to-head match-ups takes that day’s competition.

The team captains decided which of their skiers would face off against the other.

Tomorrow’s showdown will kick off with team captains Sage and Loïc facing off, and it only gets more interesting from there on out: Seth Morrison vs. Sam Anthamatten, Logan Pehota vs. Fabio Studer, Parker White vs. Nico Vuignier…. the stage is set for a memorable battle between these two stacked teams!

A livestream of the Big Mountain contest will be available tomorrow at skierscup.com starting at 13:30 CET.

Sam Anthamatten vs. Seth Morrison: the ultimate showdown.

The coveted Silver Boot.

Team Europe has plenty of young freestyle/freeride talent.

All of the big mountain match-ups. (In Round 1, Markus Eder will face Tim Durtschi.)