Team, Mixed

For the first time since 1988 a new event was added to the Olympic Alpine skiing program with the mixed team event. The event was contested as a parallel slalom with one jump at halfway. Although named parallel slalom, giant slalom gates were used for this event and skiiers created a specific kind of cross-blocking technique, using both arms to knock down the gates.

Every round saw four duels with two women and two men racing each other head-to-head, with each winner scoring a point for the team. For a tied race both nations were awarded a point and, if both racers did not finish, the skier who progressed further was awarded a point. The most number of wins decided the team winner in a single-elimination tournament. If the score was 2-2 the better race times of one female and one male time would break the draw. If still equal the fastest run time of any skier was used as a tiebreaker, and the final tiebreaker was the current World Nations Cup standings. The lower-placed team in the Nations Cup had to announce their four racers first, so the higher-placed team had the advantage of deciding who would race against whom. Every team match started with a women’s race followed by the men, and every nation had to compete with a woman and a man on the red and the blue course, respectively.

The first team event, at that time known as a combined team event, was held at the 2005 World championships in Bormio and was won by Germany. The first team event as part of the Alpine skiing World Cup was held in March 2006 in Åre with Austria as the winner and, since then, a team event was regularly contested at the World Cup final. All these events did not use the parallel format as they were held as a kind of a combined event by just adding the times of Super G and slalom runs. The parallel format started in 2010 at the World Cup final and was won by the Czech Republic and in 2011 at the World Championships (winner France) with both competitions held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The last five Team Events contested as part of the World Cup were all won by Switzerland (Lenzerheide 2013/14, Méribel 2014/15 and St. Moritz 2015/16) and Sweden (Innsbruck 2013/14 and Aspen 2016/17), Austria became World Champion in 2015 and France won this event at the 2017 World Championship with Adeline Baud Mugnier, Nastasia Noens, Tessa Worley, Mathieu Faivre, Julien Lizeroux and Alexis Pinturault.

The qualification system for this event allowed the best 15 nations from the current overall World Nations Cup standings to compete with South Korea automatically qualified as the host nation. When Lichtenstein (11th), Croatia (15th), Serbia (17th), and Japan (18th) did not enter a team, the Czech Republic (16th) and Hungary (19th) were invited. There was no draw as the teams were seeded according to their Nations Cup position. Every team could enter three skiers of each gender and substitutions were allowed after every round. The event was not yet a priority for the skiers as Marcel Hirscher, Henrik Kristoffersen and Mikaela Shiffrin did not participate for their nations and Switzerland did not even enter six skiers.

The first round saw the elimination of the United States, seeded in fifth, when they lost to Great Britain by cumulated time after a 2-2 draw. France also had difficulty in advancing when they won by only 0.03 seconds against Canada. In the quarter-finals Austria eliminated Sweden with a 4-0 shutout, while Norway and Switzerland only won by aggregate time. After two clear wins by Austria and Switzerland in the semi-finals, the two arch-rivals met in the final.

Austria, who lost only one duel up to the final, was not able to challenge Switzerland in the final as both men did not finish their race. Switzerland won 3-1 to become the first ever Olympic mixed team event champion. Matt set the fastest overall time with 19.23 on the blue course in the quarter-finals against Sweden, while the second best time was raced on the red course by Zenhäusern with 19.33 against Germany in the same round. The best time for women was set by Holdener with 20.97 on the red course in the semi-finals against France, and Gallhuber raced the second fastest time with 21.04 on the blue course in the same duel as her compatriot Matt. The only substitution was made by Austria, when they replaced Marco Schwarz with Manuel Feller for the quarter-finals only, but all skiers entered by the teams received medals, including the non-starters.