The 2025 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Saalbach, Austria, will offer action and excitement from the very start. A championship race and its medal ceremony will take place during the opening ceremony, the Austrian Ski Federation (ÖSV) revealed last week.

According to the organizers, the mixed team parallel event will start the championship event.

“The FIS is also enthusiastic; a few little things still need to be clarified, but our goal is to start with a competition,” Austrian Ski Federation (ÖSV) President Roswitha Stadlober said on September 14, according to the Austrian news agency APA.

The mixed team parallel competition and the other ten competitions scheduled for the 2025 World Championships will share one finish area at the compact venue on the Zwölferkogel mountain in Hinterglemm. This is the second time the Saalbach-Hinterglemm region has hosted the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships; the first time was in 1991.

The 2025 championships are now about 500 days away. The organizers and the fastest racers of the upcoming 2023/24 season will test the 2025 championship venue during the World Cup Finals on March 16-24, 2024. “Then we will see where we need or want to make adjustments,” Stadlober said last week, according to the APA.

However, there will not be a mixed team parallel event during the 2024 World Cup Finals and no parallel events of any kind during the 2023/24 World Cup season, according to the FIS race schedule.

Parallel details

Ski Austria’s Alpine Director Herbert Mandl describes the 2025 World Championship Zwölferkogel hill for the mixed team parallel competition as steeper and shorter than in past team parallel competitions, the APA reports.

In November 2021, Patrick Ortlieb, part of the three-person ÖSV management team, told Ski Racing Media that the ÖSV would like to start the 2025 World Championships with a parallel event. This will make it easier for the organizers to prepare the hill with similar conditions for both the parallel courses instead of hosting a parallel event on a hill that might have variable snow conditions after being prepared for previous competitions, which might have taken place mainly on one side of the hill, Ortlieb explained at that time.

Last week’s news regarding incorporating the mixed team parallel event and its medal ceremony into the 2025 World Championship opening ceremony promises an exciting start to the Saalbach-Hinterglemm events. The USA captured the 2023 World Championship title in an inspiring and dramatic mixed team parallel competition in February 2023.

2026 Olympics will not feature Mix Team Parallel

Ski Racing Media reported that the viewer-friendly and exciting event will not be part of the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics due to logistic challenges. However, the mixed team parallel event will probably return to future Olympics if the proximity of the men’s and women’s Olympic alpine skiing venues allows. FIS writes in an email to Ski Racing Media. The mixed team parallel has been in the last two Olympics (2018 and 2022) and the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships since 2005.

While mixed team events will take place in the future, FIS has decided to discontinue the individual parallel events after the 2023 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Courchevel Méribel, both in future FIS Alpine World Ski Championships and in the FIS Alpine World Cup.

Fierce fight for medals

According to the APA, Mandl believes the 2025 World Championship mixed team parallel competition will be important for the ÖSV and the Austrian team. An Austrian team medal during the opening ceremony would help set the tone for the rest of the championship races on home snow.

However, as many other national teams will aim for a successful start in Saalbach on February 4, 2025, there will be a fierce fight for the medals.  Make sure to mark your calendar  so you don’t miss the thrills, spills, and mixed team action on the World Championship red and blue parallel courses.