The Men's Alpine Skiing World Cup events in Italy continued with a parallel giant slalom in Alta Badia on Monday and a slalom in Madonna di Campiglio on Tuesday.

Parallel Giant Slalom in Alta Badia

The first ever World Cup parallel GS was run as a night race on the bottom section of the Gran Risa slope, with a run lasting about 20 seconds.

The race had a knockout draw of 32 skiers with 16 skiers qualifying directly from the giant slalom World Cup start list, and an additional four direct entries were given based on the overall World Cup start list. The remaining 12 slots were filled based on the results of the first run of Sunday's giant slalom.

The first round had two runs while the following rounds had only one run to determine the winner.

The first run had multiple major surprises. The giant slalom and overall World Cup leader, Marcel Hirscher, lost to Italy's Riccardo Tonetti after going out on the second run. Hirscher's final position was 28th, earning him three points.

Other big names losing in the first round were Felix Neureuther (lost to Gino Caviezel, final position 19th) who is third in the GS standings, Henrik Kristoffersen (lost to Dominik Schwaiger, final position 22nd) who is fourth, and Ted Ligety (lost to Cyprien Richard, final position 24th) who is fifth.

The only remaining skier from the GS standings' top five, is the guy slotted in second-place, Victor Muffat-Jeandet, and he didn't have much of a successful race. He lost on the second round to André Myhrer, having a final position of 10th.

The only pre-race favorite doing well in the race was third-seeded Alexis Pinturault, who lost the quarterfinal to Dominik Schwaiger. Pinturault continued in the losers' draw, finishing in fifth place.

While the GS specialists were struggling, the Norwegian speed specialists were doing well. Unusual for giant slalom, there were jumps on the course and Aksel Lund Svindal and Kjetil Jansrud were able to gain time on their opponents in the jumps. Svindal, second in the overall World Cup, made the semifinal and faced Schwaiger there, while Jansrud, third in the overall standings, made the semifinal and faced Myhrer.

The final became an all-Norwegian affair, with Svindal and Jansrud beating their opponents. Schwaiger and Myhrer faced in the small final with Myhrer claiming third place.

In the final, Jansrud beat Svindal by 0.22 seconds and the last season's overall World Cup runner-up achieved his first win of the 2015-16 season. With the runner-up position, Svindal claimed the overall World Cup lead from Marcel Hirscher to lead him by 57 points.

The top four of the giant slalom standings remained intact after the parallel GS. Second-placed Victor Muffat-Jeandet reduced Hirscher's lead by 23 points to 111 points, while third-placed Felix Neureuther is 154 points and fourth-placed Henrik Kristoffersen 174 points behind Hirscher.

Slalom in Madonna di Campiglio

Photo: Shin Tanaka (AP Photo / NTB scanpix)

The winner of the season's only previous slalom race in Val d'Isère, Henrik Kristoffersen, dominated the first run. His lead over the three-time defending slalom World Cup champion Marcel Hirscher in second place was 1.03 seconds.

Hirscher was followed by two Italians; Stefano Gross was in third place, 1.23 seconds from leader Kristoffersen, and the 2010 Olympic gold medalist Giuliano Razzoli was in fourth place, 1.33 seconds from Kristoffersen.

26th in the first run, Switzerland's Luca Aerni set the quickest time of the second run and progressed to fifth place in the final results.

The first man to beat Aerni's time was Austria's Marco Schwarz. He fininished 17th in the first run but was the second-quickest in the second run and beat the Swiss by 0.25 seconds.

Schwarz and Aerni were still the top two of the race with the first run's best four to come. Giuliano Razzoli narrowly missed Schwarz's time but went to second place, 0.08 seconds behind. Stefano Gross had a run full of mistakes and lost 2.90 seconds, eventually finishing in 17th place. That secured 20-year-old Schwarz's career-first podium in his third World Cup race.

First run's second place finisher, Marcel Hirscher, had a lead of 1.08 seconds over Schwarz. Although his second run wasn't as quick as Schwarz's, he claimed the lead by 0.34 seconds.

Hirscher's run had a dangerous incident when a camera drone crashed behind him, luckily not hitting him.

Nothing could prevent the leader after the first run, Henrik Kristoffersen, from winning the race. He extended the gap to Hirscher, winning by 1.25 seconds.

Kristoffersen leads the slalom World Cup with a clean record of two wins and 200 points. Hirscher is in second place, 40 points behind. In third place, 121 points from lead, is the USA's David Chodounsky, ninth in Madonna di Campiglio.

Hirscher claimed back the overall World Cup lead from Aksel Lund Svindal and leads him by 23 points. Kjetil Jansrud is in third place, 216 points from Hirscher. Kristoffersen is in fourth place, 18 points behind Jansrud.

Men's World Cup continues on Tuesday, December 29 with a downhill race in Santa Caterina, Italy.