As a junior Smith never really delivered the results to go with the style. In his first season he was of the Cam Cole, Sam Blenkinsop era. He finished sixth in 2006 World Championships in Rotorua, an event unsurprisingly dominated by the locals. In 2007 he was tipped for the top, but it was a race again dominated by a local and a pile of Aussies of whom we have seen little of since. He left the juniors surrounded by those who would be his contemporaries – Marcelo Gutierrez, Remi Thirion, Josh Bryceland.

The transition through to seniors was solid. In only his second world cup race Smith qualified fifth at Vallnord behind some of the most successful names that downhill has ever seen – Atherton, Hill, Barel, Peat – now it seemed was the time, but was it too much too quickly? Stevie finished tenth on the final day, but everyone was now asking how soon would it be until he surveyed and saluted the post-race fans and photographers, spraying the Tattinger?

2009 was steady on the MS Evil team but in 2010 Smith once again showed his intentions by finishing sixth in Val Di Sole, one tenth ahead of Aaron Gwin who was growing in confidence. Oh yes, Smith was deeply involved in the Gwin era.

On the 1 August 2010 Stevie podiumed one of the toughest races on the calendar – Val Di Sole, Italy. No stranger to root and steepness, the Canadian carved into the arena with confidence on the rise, and with the World Championships now closer to home Smith went to Mt St Anne with his target in view. It was an incredible run from the man from Vancouver Island, but just not enough to topple Hill, who was simply in one of his moods. The kind of day that was out of reach. The kind of day that one day would be his.

2013 began in uncompromising fashion with Smith in an almighty arm wrestle with Gee Atherton. For the first three rounds they went head-to-head with the Canadian tracking the British rider who was in the form of his life. The series moved across the Atlantic to Mont Sainte Anne where Stevie had narrowly missed out on gold a few years earlier. The crowds were again howling for blood. It was the start of something utterly compelling, savagely brilliant. And as it turns out a record that holds a big place in downhill history.

Andrew Shandro had podiumed at this venue, he was also on home soil back in 1993. That was how long it had been and how hungry these blood thirsty crowds were. The race was, as it panned out, to be a turning point. Stevie won of course, but what had started as a touch of pushing and shoving was now an all-out brawl in which someone was sure to get hurt. The series was to reach its conclusion in Leogang, late summer, but before that Atherton and Smith had Hafjell to deal with.

Smith and Atherton were no strangers to root, each pretty much living amidst a radical landscape. And so it was that on such a system that the series was decided. But then again it wasn’t, Gee going the wrong side of a sitka and Smith ahead on pretty much all the splits that day didn’t change the fact that the series would reach a thumping conclusion in Austria, a test of nerve and skill. Had Smith taken the sting out of Atherton? The most incredible application of racecraft was about to be put to the test and witnessed live. The pressure was acute.