A fortnight before Sölden, the week was mostly about what happens behind the scenes. FIS has lost its men’s race director, and the Crans-Montana World Championships the head of their organising committee. On the snow, Mikaela Shiffrin is reshaping her winter, and two leading Italians will miss the opener.
Behind the scenes
Markus Waldner steps down as men’s race director
Markus Waldner is leaving his post as FIS men’s race director, which he had held since 2014. He cites growing pressure and says he no longer has the energy to run a full season the way he wants, adding that he did not take the decision lightly. No successor has been named. In the meantime, women’s race director Peter Gerdol will also oversee the men’s tour. Waldner will stay on in support during the transition, and a new role for him within FIS is under discussion (FIS statement, via Laola1).
Waldner, a 63-year-old South Tyrolean, leaves a mark that matches an exposed job. Safety was his heaviest file. After the crashes in Bormio in late 2024, he bristled at criticism, asking whether races should simply stop. A few weeks later, he conceded that the sport might have gone past its limits. A figure as contested as he was respected (ORF, Tiroler Tageszeitung, Laola1).
Crans-Montana: organising committee president resigns
Four months before the World Championships, Claude-Alain Schmidhalter, 62, has stepped down with immediate effect as president of the organising committee. A vice-president of Swiss-Ski, he faces trial for fraud and mismanagement. The case concerns his engineering company, not the Championships. He says he has done nothing wrong, but that “a president absent for an indefinite period, a few months before the championships, harms the project”. Swiss-Ski had already suspended him from all his roles. Sebastian Rey and Diego Züger are in charge for now (Laola1).
Calendar confirmed, and sixty candles
Meeting in Geneva, FIS confirmed the 2027 season calendar, largely as announced in April. Narvik stays on the schedule for 12–13 March, though the exact venue has yet to be settled. The wild card rules are now set: bib 31, four per discipline, and one fewer for each finish outside the top 30. The season also marks 60 years of the World Cup, which began on 5 January 1967 in Berchtesgaden with a slalom won by Austria’s Heinrich Messner. The crystal globes will be given more prominence on screen and, where logistics allow, at the venues (FIS).
Athletes
Mikaela Shiffrin cuts back on slalom
Mikaela ShiffrinUSA is putting more weight on giant slalom and super-G. She will skip the first slaloms of the winter, in Levi and Gurgl, and return to the discipline only in Killington, her home World Cup, at the end of November. She calls it a “season of exploration”, with the Crans-Montana World Championships in sight, and wants more time to recover. In a video, she said she wanted to try something new to keep developing as a racer, and that her joy had never been only about medals or records (Ski Racing Media; APA, via Laola1).
At a media day for her ski supplier, Atomic, in Altenmarkt, she went further. She accepts that she may never win the overall title again, and says it has moved into the background. She has not ruled it out if the winter goes well. Last season, 1,080 of her 1,534 World Cup points came from slalom (APA, via Laola1).
Goggia and Brignone will miss Sölden
The two viruses that stopped Sofia GoggiaITA in Argentina are now known: chikungunya, carried by a mosquito, and parvovirus B19, rare in adults. She told Sky Sport there is no cure and that she has to wait for it to pass. The acute phase is over, but the after-effects linger (Laola1). After a month off, she returned to training last weekend, though not yet at full load (APA, via Laola1).
Federica BrignoneITA, double Olympic champion in February, is also skipping the opener. After surgery on 25 August to remove the plate in her leg, she will return to snow training in November, with no date set for her racing return; she will come back only once fully fit (Festival dello Sport in Trento, via Laola1).
Marco Schwarz gives up slalom
Marco SchwarzAUT will no longer race slalom. Speaking to the media in Vienna, the Austrian said he would focus on giant slalom and speed. Yet slalom is where he has won most often: three of his eight World Cup victories (Laola1).
In brief
Manuel FellerAUT is back on snow on the Pitztal glacier, after a herniated disc kept him out of the team’s camp in Chile (Laola1). Norway’s Thea Louise StjernesundNOR and Timon HauganNOR are moving to Salzburg for the rest of their careers, and plan to return to Norway afterwards (Verdens Gang, via Laola1).
Every date of the 2027 season, women and men. Open the calendar