The women's parallel competition in the 2020 FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup was contested as a World Cup discipline separate from slalom for the first time in 2020. Prior to the season, FIS decided to combine parallel skiing events (including all of parallel giant slalom, parallel slalom, and city events (parallel slaloms held on courses built within cities)) into a new discipline, joining the existing disciplines of downhill, super-G, giant slalom, slalom, and Alpine combined. The discipline winner would receive a small crystal globe, similar to the other disciplines. However, at the same time, FIS decided to drop the city events to reduce the amount of travel required during the World Cup season, planning to replace them with more parallel events at regular venues.
The parallel format was also changed to make the race more TV-friendly. Parallel races now began with one classic qualification run to determine the top 32, who advanced to the elimination phase of the main competition. The round of 32 used the existing run and re-run format, so that each competitor got to start from each side, but from the round of 16 forward, there was only one run per race and a direct knockout system—the loser of each race was gone. However, the new format immediately became controversial, as making two giant slalom courses equal in a single-run format proved impossible, and the first women's parallel giant slalom race suffered from "the luck of the draw" becoming determinative—17 of 20 winners came from the same course.
Ultimately, only two parallel events, the first a parallel slalom (PS) and the second a parallel giant slalom (PG), were held in the 2019–20 season. A third event, another parallel slalom, had been scheduled for Åre, Sweden, near the end of the season, but it was canceled to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the two parallel events that were held, Slovakian skier Petra Vlhová won the first event and also won the first-ever discipline championship and accompanying crystal globe for women in parallel. At this time, individual parallel races were not included in the season finals, which were scheduled in 2020 for Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy but were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Standings #Skier PS PG PSTot. Petra Vlhová 10013x1132 Clara DirezDNS100x1003 Federica Brignone 4050x904 Anna Swenn-Larsson80DNSx80 Elisa Mörzinger DNS80x806 Marta Bassino1860x787 Kristin Lysdahl 2640x668 Franziska Gritsch60DNSx609 Meta Hrovat 508x5810 Sofia Goggia1045x5511 Laurence St. Germain 45DNSx4512 Aline Danioth 2216x3813 Wendy Holdener1126x3714 Nina Haver-Løseth 36DNSx 36 Thea Louise Stjernesund DNS36x3616 Sara Hector1222x3417 Ana Bucik 32DNSx32 Tina Robnik DNS32x3219 Nina O'Brien724x3120 Estelle Alphand 29DNSx29 Mikaela ShiffrinDNS29x2922 Katharina Truppe242x2623 Lara Gut-BehramiDNS20x20 Christina Ackermann20DNSx2025 Laura PirovanoDNS18x18References
DNS = Did Not Start
See also 2020 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's summary rankings 2020 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's overall 2020 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's downhill 2020 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's super-G 2020 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's giant slalom 2020 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's slalom 2020 Alpine Skiing World Cup – Women's combined World Cup scoring system
References
External links Alpine Skiing at FIS website