Even the most successful skier of all time has room to improve. The 2026-27 ski season marks a change in direction for Mikaela Shiffrin, who last year won a record-equalling sixth World Cup title and a ninth in slalom. This year, the 31-year-old will race less in her specialist discipline in order to focus more on giant slalom and super-G, calling this her “exploration season”.

Like a boxer moving up a weight class having won everything at their typical weight, or the likes of star athletes Alex Yee and Femke Broeders-Bol dipping their toes into triathlon or 800m running having dominated their original discipline, Shiffrin is still hoping to discover new things about herself and her sport, 15 years on from her World Cup debut.

Her statement announcing the new approach was revealing: “I’m not trying to do less because I care less. I’m trying to do something different because I still care SO much. The joy for me has never been about medals or records. We’re calling it the exploration season.”

Few could accuse Shiffrin of slowing down, or of caring less. She told The Athletic earlier this year: “They just don’t think that I have to do work anymore to be good at slalom. Actually, I’m that good at slalom because I do work constantly every single day. I do not ever settle or rest.”

So this is the move of an athlete who, having conquered the sport multiple times over, is still looking for an extra percent or two, to see just how far she can go. Of her record 110 World Cup wins, 73 are in slalom; there is still, evidently, work to be done in GS and super-G to get them near that level, despite her already being the greatest of all time.

Shiffrin is the best turner in the sport and excels in the exceptionally tricky, technical slalom; GS, which combines the precise turns of slalom with the speed of downhill, and super-G, a more classic speed discipline, come slightly less naturally. Even with that caveat her 22 career wins in GS are in fact the women’s record - but Shiffrin has long since passed the point of competing with others, only with herself.

It is her reference to “joy” in her sport that is particularly telling. Her return to giant slalom and super-G is made more remarkable because of the serious crashes she has endured in both disciplines in the last few years, including suffering a puncture wound to her abdomen in a GS crash in Killington in 2024 which left her with post-traumatic stress disorder.

She has raced GS since returning from that crash but not made winning it a specific target. But she was only three-tenths of a second off the podium in Milan-Cortina, and it sounds as though she is now prepared to face it head-on - and she can approach the two disciplines with the same freedom as she does slalom.

She described the sense of relief that came with winning Olympic slalom gold this year – eight years on from her last title – as like “being born again”. The nagging questions of “keyboard warriors”, who questioned her mental strength after years of crushing disappointment at the Olympics, have been answered: now she can turn her attention to projects which had previously been shunted to one side in pursuit of that all-important gold.

And this season makes the most sense to go slightly off-piste (sorry). It is the first of the new four-year Olympic cycle and the least consequential, as teams and athletes begin the slow process of building towards Alpes 2030. The early stages of the GS World Cup will also be without the racer to beat in Olympic champion Federica Brignone, who is sidelined with a leg injury.

Shiffrin’s return to super-G and GS will be fascinating to watch, while the shift in strategy also opens the possibility of a more evenly balanced slalom field. She emphasised that she would not be going into any slalom races “underprepared” – comparing that to “jumping into a giant blender and trying to avoid the blades”.

But if anyone can go into a slalom underbaked it is her: she won nine of the 10 slalom races on the World Cup circuit last season and obliterated the competition at the Olympic Games, finishing 1.5 seconds of silver medallist Camille Rast – the biggest winning margin in any Olympic Alpine ski race in 28 years.

Despite that, Shiffrin’s decision also makes sense in the context of last season. Her winning margin over Germany’s Emma Aicher in the overall standings was just 87 points, by far the smallest of any of her six crystal globes. While she dominated in slalom she was fourth in giant slalom and outside the top 30 in super-G.

Meanwhile 22-year-old Aicher finished second in the downhill standings, third in super-G, sixth in slalom and still inside the top 20 in GS, as well as winning two silver medals in Milan-Cortina. The all-rounder is one of several contenders threatening to close in on the American great. Shiffrin’s decision to start fewer slalom races may make retaining that crystal globe a tougher task, but getting into podium contention in her comparatively weaker disciplines would help her overall title tilt.

Aicher, for her part, expressed her disappointment in her decision: “I regret that Mikaela plans to skip a few slaloms, she is the face of our sport. When she starts, she is still the benchmark for all of us.” That will remain the case, and in fact this year of experimentation, and the sense of mental freedom that comes with it, could unlock a new edge to Shiffrin as she continues to chase greatness in all its forms.