Just after Mikaela Shiffrin won slalom gold at the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, retirement talk quickly followed. The victory gave the American star her third Olympic gold medal, but fans soon began wondering whether it could be one of her final major wins. Shiffrin herself added to the uncertainty when she admitted, “I feel that there’s some kind of transition in my career coming closer, but I don’t know what that looks like and I don’t know how to say it.” Now, though, putting the retirement rumors aside, it seems Shiffrin has a very different plan in mind for what comes next.

With just over two weeks to go before the 2026/27 Alpine Ski World Cup season opens on October 24 in Sölden, Austria, Shiffrin took to social media on October 6 to explain the thinking behind her new approach. “For 16 years, my goal has been the same: push my limits and become a better, faster ski racer,” she wrote. “That part hasn’t changed.”

Instead of trying to fit as many races as possible into another season, Shiffrin wants room to explore what still excites her on the slopes. “This season is an exploration,” she wrote.

Slalom has been at the center of Shiffrin’s career for years. She has won nine World Cup slalom titles and 73 of her record 110 World Cup victories in the discipline. She has also enjoyed plenty of success in giant slalom and super-G, winning three overall Crystal Globes across the two disciplines and 22 World Cup giant slalom races. Now, after years of focusing heavily on slalom, she wants to spend more time finding out what she can still do in GS and super-G. For Shiffrin, the motivation has never been solely about medals or records.

“I ADORE the process of getting better,” Shiffrin wrote. “I love training more than racing. I love trying to figure out a turn. I love when something isn’t working and then, little by little, you understand it.” That curiosity is now pulling her toward giant slalom and super-G. Shiffrin wants more time to train in those disciplines and find out how much she can still improve. 

While her schedule is changing, Shiffrin made sure fans understood that she is not abandoning the discipline that has defined so much of her career. “I’m planning to race less slalom this season. Not necessarily no slalom!” she wrote. Her current plan is to make Killington her first slalom race of the season, while leaving the door open for several more appearances later in the winter. She also wants to maintain enough ranking points to keep her options open.

That means she is expected to miss the early-season slaloms in Levi, Finland, where she has won a record nine times, and Gurgl, Austria. Instead, the shift toward GS and super-G will give Shiffrin more time between races to recover and prepare. The World Cup calendar features 11 giant slalom races, seven super-G races and 10 slaloms.

And Shiffrin wants to make another point very clear: racing less slalom has nothing to do with the discipline becoming easier. “I’ve been asked A LOT recently whether slalom has become too ‘easy,'” she wrote. “I want to be very clear: that couldn’t be further from reality.” She cited the physical pressure, coordination, equipment set-up and repetitions needed to keep up with competition. “One does not simply show up to a World Cup slalom and win,” she added.

That’s where the recent announcement by Shiffrin becomes very intriguing. She knows fans have been asking whether her decision to race less slalom means she is slowly moving toward retirement. But she says she sees the situation differently. In fact, Shiffrin believes doing exactly what she has always done could push her toward retirement sooner.

“Ironically, the more predictable choice might be to race only slalom,” she explained. “But staying only where I’ve been most successful, rather than taking a risk and following my curiosity into something less known, feels like a faster path toward retirement.” Racing fewer slaloms will also provide Shiffrin with more time at home early in the season, something she’s had little of in her career.

She said it will be weird not to run in Levi or Garmisch, two races she has done for many years. But the extra time will allow her to recover, train differently and spend longer blocks working on giant slalom and super-G. She sees that as creating room to continue doing what she loves. “I’m not doing less because I care less,” Shiffrin wrote. “I’m trying something different because I still care a lot.”

And for now, that seems to be the clearest answer Shiffrin has given to the retirement questions. With that in mind, she plans to make Killington her first slalom stop of the season. But her return to the Vermont venue comes with some difficult memories.

Shiffrin’s unforgettable Killington setback

The Vermont venue was the site of one of the most frightening crashes of Shiffrin’s recent career. The crash happened on November 30, 2024, during the second run of the women’s giant slalom. Shiffrin was chasing her 100th World Cup victory and had taken the lead after the opening run, putting herself in position to reach the milestone in front of her home crowd.

But with only a few gates left in her second run, she lost the edge of her outside ski. She hit a gate, was thrown into a somersault and eventually crashed into the safety fencing. The fall left her with severe pain on the right side of her abdomen. Shiffrin later described the pain as unlike anything she had experienced before and initially feared that she could have suffered damage to an internal organ.

She was unable to get up and asked ski patrol to take her down the mountain on a sled. Further examinations revealed a deep puncture wound in her abdomen, along with serious trauma to the surrounding abdominal muscles. The wound was later reported to be around seven centimeters deep and extended into her external and internal oblique muscles.

The injury also forced her to withdraw from the Killington slalom the following day. Now, nearly two years later, Shiffrin is planning to return to Killington as her first slalom stop of the new season. This time, she will arrive with a very different purpose.