Shiffrin's plan boosts rivals and Odermatt is men's favorite in new Alpine skiing season

Whether Mikaela Shiffrin can win Alpine skiing’s World Cup overall title again is less rhetorical in the upcoming season than it has been for many years.

This weekend, the Olympic slalom champion ventures into what she calls her “exploration season,” reducing the number of starts in her strongest discipline and putting more focus on giant slalom and super-G.

“It makes me feel more inspired about what I can do in the next years and to see how much more I have to give to the sport,” Shiffrin says.

Last season, the American's star's sixth overall title equalled the women’s record set in the 1970s by Austrian great Annemarie Moser-Pröll.

Shiffrin’s changed approach is one of the main talking points ahead of ski racing’s 2026-27 campaign, which starts in Austria with a pair of giant slaloms on the Rettenbach glacier in Sölden.

The women race on Saturday, and the next day Swiss standout Marco Odermatt starts the chase for his sixth straight overall title in the men’s GS.

The first season under the leadership of newly elected FIS President Alexander Ospelt includes 40 women’s and 43 men’s races through March, interrupted by the world championships in Crans-Montana in the first two weeks of February.

The World Cup travels to North America twice: The men race in Copper Mountain and Beaver Creek in late November and early December, while the women travel to Killington, Tremblant and, a week after the men’s races, to Beaver Creek.

Also, Sun Valley hosts the World Cup Finals for both genders in March.

Next after Sölden are two weekends of slalom racing in Finland and Austria, but Shiffrin will sit those out, planning to open her slalom season in Killington on Nov. 29.

Racing less in her favourite discipline seems a bold move by Shiffrin, who has won 73 races in slalom and 110 overall — both World Cup records.

The American’s last win in a GS came nearly three years ago, in December 2023; her last super-G triumph was a year before that. Her 22 career victories in GS remain the women’s record.

Shiffrin used to race and win in all disciplines but she has been reducing her schedule in recent years since terrifying crashes in a downhill in Cortina in early 2024 and a GS in Killington 10 months later.

“GS has been such a crazy journey over the last three, four years for me now," she says. "I have really big questions whether I can win again.”

The same applies to super-G, she adds.

“I have no idea: Could I podium, could I not? I’m just interested to draw that curtain a little bit and that’s what’s kind of driving me so much.”

Shiffrin racked up nine slalom wins last season, earning her 980 points of her total of 1,410, and giving her the edge over all-event skier Emma Aicher of Germany.

Aicher finished just 87 points behind in the overall standings, by far the smallest margin of any of Shiffrin’s six overall titles.

“I regret that Mikaela plans to skip a few slaloms, she is the face of our sport,” Aicher says. “But, for sure, when she starts, she is still the benchmark for all of us.”

Aicher plans to push out of as many start gates as possible again this season: “As long as I have fun skiing all four disciplines, I will keep doing so.”

Finishing third behind Shiffrin and Aicher last season was Camille Rast of Switzerland, the only other skier who passed the 1,000-point mark, though the 2025 slalom world champion has been dealing with a persistent hip issue.

While Shiffrin’s choice might put a question mark on her status as the favorite for the women’s overall title, there is no such doubt on the men’s side.

Odermatt can become only the second skier, male or female, to win the biggest crystal globe for the sixth season in a row, after Austrian standout Marcel Hirscher won it eight consecutive times from 2012-19.

However, a muscle injury in late August forced Odermatt to skip the first week of a training camp in Chile with the dominant Swiss team, which includes Franjo von Allmen , the three-time Olympic gold medalist, and Loic Meillard , the slalom champion from the Milan-Cortina Games.

“Racing three disciplines means you always have to divide your time by three. I always have fewer days in each discipline than the specialists,” Odermatt says.

His biggest threat could again be last season’s runner-up Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, who switched from the Norway team to give Brazil its first World Cup win and Olympic title in ski racing.

Pinheiro Braathen still trailed Odermatt by a massive 568 points in the overall standings, though he did beat his Swiss rival to the giant slalom title .

See AP’s full Alpine skiing coverage here