Mikaela Shiffrin full-speed ahead for what could be busiest season ever

Mikaela Shiffrin is preparing for what could be her busiest Alpine ski racing season ever.

It might become her fastest, too.

Coming off a season that included Olympic disappointment but also her fourth overall World Cup title, the American is eager to add more speed events to her schedule.

The World Cup season, which starts with a giant slalom in Austria on Oct. 22, includes 42 races, plus six events at the World Championships in France in February.

"I'm probably not going to do all of them. But I would like to focus a bit more on some of the super-G races and, for sure, all the slaloms and the GS," Shiffrin told The Associated Press in a recent video call.

Shiffrin has never raced more than 26 World Cup events in any of her 11 seasons on the circuit. That could change in 2022-23, with 11 slaloms, 10 giant slaloms and nine super-Gs on the cards.

And don't rule out a few downhill starts, too, even though she will sit out the new Zermatt-Cervinia speed season opener early November.

"Downhill takes more time, more days, more effort, so then it's less training for other events. We pick and choose which downhill is possible," said Shiffrin, adding it "brings me a lot of joy, to ski super-G, as long as my slalom and GS feel like they are on point, then we try that out."

WATCH | Shiffrin victorious in France downhill:

Going into the new season also draws a line under the previous one, which was overshadowed by Shiffrin's surprising lack of medals at the Beijing Games, where she failed to finish any of the tech races and placed ninth in super-G and 18th in downhill.

"The biggest takeaway from the Olympics is those races didn't take away anything from anything else that happened in my career," Shiffrin said.

"It's not that I