Mikaela Shiffrin is changing her race schedule for the Alpine skiing World Cup season that starts in two weeks, planning for fewer slaloms while focusing more on giant slalom and super-G than in the past.
“We’re calling it the exploration season,” she said. “It’s an opportunity to maybe shift focus a little bit. I’ve been doing this for 16 years, and my focus has more or less remained very stable. It’s always been around slalom, GS, with some bits of speed here and there.
“My overall focus has always just been to become a faster ski racer, to be a better ski racer, to push my limits within the sport. That part is not changing. I want to give myself a little bit more freedom to ask where I feel curious and to sort of follow that itch a little bit. What are the things that really, really inspire me to lock in? That’s the question I’m asking.”
Shiffrin is expected to race the first event of the season, an Oct. 24 giant slalom in Sölden, Austria.
After Sölden, Shiffrin in the past followed the tour for the first slaloms in November in Levi, Finland — where she has won nine times — and Gurgl, Austria.
She plans to skip Levi and Gurgl this season, then race her first slalom of the season in Killington, Vermont, on Nov. 29.
Her slalom plan after that is “a few more to be selected from there,” according to a press release. Whether that will include the slalom at the World Championships in February in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, is to be determined. There are 10 total World Cup slaloms scheduled this season.
Shiffrin is not only the most successful World Cup ski racer in history — 110 wins — but also the best in slalom with 73 victories, plus Olympic gold medals in the event in 2014 and 2026 and four consecutive World Championships titles from 2013-19.
“After this Olympic season and this Olympic cycle, I’ve been kind of reflecting, asking questions that are a little bit different than I typically ask myself, and it’s been centered around what parts of this sport I want to be chasing,” she said. “Not what I should be chasing. Not what makes sense on paper.”
Shiffrin also owns a female record 22 World Cup GS wins, along with 2018 Olympic gold in that event.
On Nov. 30, 2024, she crashed in a GS, puncturing oblique muscles and nearly piercing organs. As Shiffrin worked back up — from walking normally again to training GS again months later — she dealt with what she called “mental obstacles.” She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in February 2025, then returned to GS racing for the last three races of the 2024-25 season with a best finish of 25th.
Shiffrin began the 2025-26 season fearing she might fall out of the top 30 in the GS rankings and that “might be sort of the beginning of the end of GS for me.”
Instead, she finished the season ranked fourth in GS in World Cup points.
“Having the goal of actually working back into the top seven, having that actually happen and seeing that I have speed in GS, even where fear exists, I can play with that,” she said. “I can have a relationship with that fear. The last two years I’ve learned so much about mentality and psychology and fear.”
Shiffrin has raced the speed discipline of super-G three times in the last two years (with a best finish of 22nd) since a January 2024 crash in downhill, the other speed discipline, where she sprained left leg ligaments.
She is the 2019 World champion in super-G, plus has five World Cup wins in the event, the most recent in 2022.
“I don’t want people to hear that I’m done with slalom,” she said. “That’s not what I’m saying, and I don’t want people to hear that slalom isn’t challenging anymore because I’m definitely not saying that. I don’t want people to get from this (that) she’s stepping back, because that’s not how this feels to me at all. If anything, I’ve had a little bit more of an intense prep season than I’ve ever had before. I’m changing the question. Instead of asking how much can I possibly fit into this upcoming season, I’m asking what happens if I give myself enough space to explore the things that I’m the most curious about. I don’t actually know the answer, so that’s kind of the point.”
Shiffrin said that racing fewer slaloms could allow her to spend more time at home in Colorado during the October-to-March season, which is otherwise spent mostly in Europe.
Shiffrin also said she could at some point shift focus back to slalom if she learns that she misses the event.
“I’m trying something new here, and it’s different, and it is a little scary,” she said. “It’s pretty uncomfortable, and it’s also very, very exciting, and all of those things can exist at the same time.”
