A New Boss Takes Over Mens Skiing on Sunday: Plancker, Levi and the Stars Picking Their Races

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There is no Alpine World Cup race this weekend, and that gap is the perfect time to explain a change that will shape every men's race from now on. On Sunday 1 November, Raimund Plancker takes over as FIS chief race director for men's Alpine skiing, succeeding longtime race director Markus Waldner. His first official assignment will be the men's World Cup slalom in Levi, Finland, on Sunday 15 November. The women's slalom at Levi is the day before, on Saturday 14 November.

Plancker is not a newcomer. He has served as assistant race director for men's speed events since 2022, and he has been part of the FIS leadership team at the World Cup Finals and across the speed season. FIS Alpine Director Janne Leskinen welcomed the appointment, according to Ski Racing Media, and the leadership team around Plancker stays familiar. Hannes Trinkl will continue overseeing men's speed events, while Janez Hladnik remains responsible for the technical disciplines. That continuity matters, because a race director does not just watch races. He decides whether a race can run safely, how a course is set, when a start is moved or a race is postponed, and how the rules are applied on the day. In a sport where weather, snow and light can change in an hour, that job is often the difference between a race and a cancellation.

What does a chief race director actually do?

A chief race director is the FIS official in charge of the men's World Cup on race day. He works with the local organising committee, the course setters, the jury, and the teams, and he makes the calls that fans often only notice when something goes wrong. At Solden last weekend, for example, the men's giant slalom course was shortened for wind, with a reserve lower start, and the race still produced a full result. Decisions like that, about start height, course length, snow preparation, and safety nets, sit with the race director and the jury, not with the skiers.

Plancker takes over at a moment when the men's tour is in transition. The season opened at Solden with Lucas Pinheiro Braathen winning the men's giant slalom in 1:44.72, beating Loic Meillard by 0.48 seconds and Marco Odermatt by 0.49 seconds, on Odermatt's 200th World Cup start. Braathen already leads the men's overall standings with 100 points, Meillard has 80, and Odermatt has 60. Levi is the next men's race, and it is a slalom, not a giant slalom, so the technical specialists will take over from the giant slalom specialists. Plancker's first race will therefore be a test of a different discipline, on the steep, icy Levi Black slope, in Finnish Lapland, in November light.

Why are the stars picking their races this season?

Plancker's arrival coincides with a wider trend, described in Le Temps on 24 October as "less is more". Many of the biggest names in Alpine skiing have announced schedules pared back to their strongest disciplines, or with certain stops cut out, and have tempered the exploratory ambitions that may have driven them until now. That is not a sign that the sport is weakening. It is a sign that the calendar, with 40 women's races and 43 men's races this season, plus a World Championships break from 1 to 14 February in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, forces choices, especially in an Olympic cycle where injuries are costly.

Mikaela Shiffrin is the clearest example. The six time overall champion plans to skip the early slaloms at Levi, Finland, and Gurgl, Austria, before returning to the discipline at Killington, Vermont, on 29 November. She calls the coming winter an "exploration season", and she wants more time to work through the questions that interest her in giant slalom and super-G, with fewer switches between disciplines. Shiffrin has said her total number of starts may look much the same over the full season, but the balance in the first third of the season will be different. She has won a record 110 World Cup races, including 73 slaloms, and she won nine of the ten World Cup slaloms last season. Skipping Levi and Gurgl, races she has won a combined 11 times, is therefore a deliberate choice, not a sign that she has lost interest.

Marco Odermatt is another example. The Swiss star begins the men's season as the favourite to extend his run of overall titles, having won five in a row, and he is chasing a sixth straight overall title, which would make him only the second man after Marcel Hirscher, who won eight, to reach six. According to Le Temps, Odermatt could skip some giant slaloms this season, as part of managing his calendar toward the World Championships in February. In an interview with Olympics.com on 19 October, Odermatt said he felt he had already reached his peak, which is a striking thing for a 29 year old chasing a sixth title to say, and it underlines how much the top skiers are thinking about longevity, not just the next race.

Marco Schwarz, according to the same Le Temps report, is dropping slalom altogether this season. That is a bigger call than skipping one or two races, because slalom is a core discipline, and Schwarz has been a slalom contender. His decision shows how specialised the sport has become. A skier who tries to race everything risks being good at nothing, and a skier who picks his disciplines can be excellent at the ones he chooses.

Who is the exception to the less is more trend?

Emma Aicher of Germany is the notable exception. The 22 year old, who pushed Shiffrin all the way to the final event of last winter in the race for the overall Crystal Globe, can win in all four classic Alpine disciplines, from slalom to downhill, and she has no intention of giving that up. Aicher finished second overall last season, just 87 points behind Shiffrin, with 1,323 points to Shiffrin's 1,410, and she scored across all four disciplines. She has three wins in super-G and two in downhill in the past 18 months, plus five slalom podiums, and many previews tip her as the favourite to go one better than last season and succeed Shiffrin as overall champion.

Aicher's approach is the opposite of Shiffrin's exploration season, but it is not a contradiction. It is a different answer to the same question: how do you win an overall title in a 40 race season? Shiffrin answers by focusing on giant slalom and super-G early, then returning to slalom at Killington. Aicher answers by racing everything, and by trusting that her all round ability will carry her through. Levi will be an early test of both approaches. Shiffrin will not be there, so Aicher, Camille Rast and Zrinka Ljutic will fight for 100 points that Shiffrin cannot match that weekend. Rast was the only skier other than Shiffrin to win a World Cup slalom last season, and Ljutic is the defending slalom Crystal Globe winner, so Levi is already a four way fight without Shiffrin, with Petra Vlhova, the record five time Levi winner, returning after 1,008 days out and finishing 23rd at Solden.

What is next on the calendar?

The World Cup calendar after Solden is busy, and Levi is just the start of a long technical block. The table below lists the next confirmed races, based on the FIS calendar and season previews. Start times for Levi and Gurgl are published closer to each race on the FIS website and should be checked there before travelling or planning viewing, because the earlier Solden previews that gave start times as CET on Saturday, when Saturday was still CEST, show how easy it is to get a timezone wrong.

| Race | Date | What to watch | | Women's slalom, Levi, Finland | Saturday 14 November | Rast, Ljutic, Aicher, Vlhova, no Shiffrin | | Men's slalom, Levi, Finland | Sunday 15 November | Braathen defends, Odermatt and Meillard chase, Plancker's first race | | Women's slalom, Gurgl, Austria | Saturday 21 November | Second slalom without Shiffrin | | Men's slalom, Gurgl, Austria | Sunday 22 November | Second men's slalom of the season | | Women's giant slalom, Killington, USA | Saturday 28 November | Shiffrin in her home race, GS focus | | Women's slalom, Killington, USA | Sunday 29 November | Shiffrin's first slalom of the season | | Women's speed races, Beaver Creek, USA | 11 to 13 December | Goggia hopes to return, Brignone target mid December | | World Championships, Crans-Montana | 1 to 14 February | Rast defends slalom gold at home | | World Cup Finals, Sun Valley, USA | 18 to 25 March | Season finale, all globes decided |

The injury picture also shapes the season. Federica Brignone, the Olympic champion in giant slalom and super-G on home snow in Cortina in February, is absent as she continues recovery from surgery in August, with a mid December target at the earliest, according to NBC Sports reporting on 7 October. Sofia Goggia has had viral infections and is only recently back to training, hoping for the North American races. Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, Shiffrin's partner, ruptured an Achilles tendon in training in Chile, in the latest blow to his career. Lindsey Vonn, the American veteran, suffered a terrible leg injury in a fall at the Cortina Olympics, according to Dubai Telegraph reporting. Gut-Behrami has retired, and Pinturault has retired, so they are not injured absentees, they are gone from the tour.

That is the context Plancker inherits. A tour where the biggest names are choosing their races carefully, where a new race director must keep the show running safely in November in Finland, and where the overall titles will be decided not just by who is fastest, but by who manages a 40 plus race season best. Levi, on 14 and 15 November, will be the first real test of that, and it will be Plancker's first race in charge. The reindeer will still be awarded to the Levi winners, the crowd will still be loud, and the winner will still have earned it on one of the toughest slalom slopes in the world. The only difference is that, for once, the man in charge of the race will be new as well.

Related live posts: Levi Without Shiffrin: Who Wins the First Slalom of the Season and Why Rast Is the Favourite, and After Solden: Who Is Fit for Levi, Who Returns in December and the Next World Cup Dates.

Sources: FIS via Ski Racing Media, Plancker appointment, 26 October 2026; Ski Racing Media, Shiffrin schedule and Odermatt title chase, 22 October 2026; Le Temps, champions picking their races, 24 to 25 October 2026; Olympics.com, Solden results and Odermatt interview, 19 to 25 October 2026; NBC Sports, Brignone recovery target, 7 October 2026.