The queen of downhill skiing is well and truly back. At age 41, still faster than the rest.
Lindsey Vonn raced to a stunningly fast win in a World Cup downhill at St. Moritz on Friday to earn her first victory in nearly eight years — and the first in her comeback with titanium implants in her right knee after a five-year retirement.
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United States' Lindsey Vonn gets emotional as she celebrates winning an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill, in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday Dec. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Luciano Bisi)
United States' Lindsey Vonn celebrates at the finish area of an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday, Dec.12, 2025. (AP Photo/Luciano Bisi)
United States' Lindsey Vonn competes in an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday, Dec.12, 2025. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP)
United States' Lindsey Vonn celebrates at the finish area of an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday, Dec.12, 2025. (AP Photo/Luciano Bisi)
United States' Lindsey Vonn listens to Aksel Lund Svindal ahead of an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday Dec. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Gabriele Facciotti)
United States' Lindsey Vonn looks on ahead of an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday Dec. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Gabriele Facciotti)
United States' Lindsey Vonn celebrates at the finish area of an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday Dec.12, 2025. (AP Photo/Luciano Bisi)
United States' Lindsey Vonn speeds down the course during an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday Dec. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Gabriele Facciotti)
United States' Lindsey Vonn celebrates at the finish area of an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday Dec.12, 2025. (AP Photo/Luciano Bisi)
The United States ski great seized the lead by an astonishing 1.16 seconds ahead of Mirjam Puchner of Austria. Even wilder was that Vonn trailed by 0.61 after the first two time checks at the Swiss resort.
Vonn's lead was later cut to 0.98 — still a massive margin in downhill — when unheralded Magdalena Egger took second place from teammate Puchner.
“It was an amazing day, I couldn’t be happier, pretty emotional," Vonn told Swiss broadcaster RTS. "I felt good this summer but I wasn’t sure how fast I was. I guess I know now how fast I am.”
Soon after, Vonn shed tears on the podium in the finish area when The Star-Spangled Banner played.
It was a perfect start to her Olympic season to get a first victory since a downhill in March 2018 at Are, Sweden.
Vonn's superb debut working with new coach Aksel Lund Svindal, a men's downhill great who won the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics title, suggests their stellar partnership is paying off.
Her run Friday looked routine when she dropped tenths of seconds to Puchner's time on the top half of the sunbathed Corviglia course, where the finish is at altitude above 2,000 meters (6,500 feet).
Vonn then was faster than anyone through the next speed checks, touching 119 kph (74 mph), and posted the fastest time splits for the bottom half.
She skied through the finish area and bumped against the inflated safety barrier, lay down in the snow and raised her arms on seeing her time.
Vonn got up, punched the air with her right fist and shrieked with joy before putting her hands to her left cheek in the style of Steph Curry's “Night, night” gesture.
The 2010 Olympic champion is targeting another gold medal at the Milan Cortina Winter Games in February. Women's Alpine skiing is at the storied Cortina d'Ampezzo course in the Dolomites, which Vonn has mastered in her career with 12 World Cup race wins.
“Obviously my goal is Cortina but if this is the way we start I think I'm in a good spot,” said Vonn, who will be favored for another downhill win Saturday at St. Moritz.
Friday’s race was Vonn’s 125th start in World Cup downhill in her storied career, 24 years after the first at Lake Louise, Canada.
She has now won a record-extending 44 of them, including at St. Moritz in 2012, and has 83 race victories across all World Cup disciplines.
Her previous win at Are came weeks after Vonn took bronze in downhill at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games in South Korea won by Sofia Goggia, who placed fourth Friday. That Olympics was Vonn's fourth and the last she attended.
She also won gold in downhill at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, and at the 2009 world championships at Val d’Isere, France.
Such is Vonn's dominance in downhill, she has more World Cup wins in the fastest discipline than the other 60 racers combined who started Friday, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation said.
A series of serious injuries this year robbed Friday's race of World Cup overall winners Federica Brignone and Lara Gut-Behrami, Olympic champion Corinne Suter and emerging U.S. prospect Lauren Macuga.
Two-time Olympic gold medalist Michelle Gisin had surgery on her back Thursday, after crashing hard in a training run at the fastest part of the St. Moritz course.
“I feel so sorry for Michelle, but that’s ski racing,” said Vonn, who suggested she is skiing even better in super-G, which is raced Sunday at the Swiss resort.
United States' Lindsey Vonn gets emotional as she celebrates winning an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill, in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday Dec. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Luciano Bisi)
United States' Lindsey Vonn celebrates at the finish area of an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday, Dec.12, 2025. (AP Photo/Luciano Bisi)
United States' Lindsey Vonn competes in an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday, Dec.12, 2025. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP)
United States' Lindsey Vonn celebrates at the finish area of an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday, Dec.12, 2025. (AP Photo/Luciano Bisi)
United States' Lindsey Vonn listens to Aksel Lund Svindal ahead of an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday Dec. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Gabriele Facciotti)
United States' Lindsey Vonn looks on ahead of an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday Dec. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Gabriele Facciotti)
United States' Lindsey Vonn celebrates at the finish area of an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday Dec.12, 2025. (AP Photo/Luciano Bisi)
United States' Lindsey Vonn speeds down the course during an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday Dec. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Gabriele Facciotti)
United States' Lindsey Vonn celebrates at the finish area of an alpine ski, women's World Cup downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Friday Dec.12, 2025. (AP Photo/Luciano Bisi)
BALTIMORE (AP) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia was due to check-in with immigration authorities on Friday, some 14 hours after he was released from detention on a judge's orders.
Abrego Garcia became a flashpoint of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown earlier this year when he was wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. He was last taken into custody in August during a similar check-in.
Abrego Garcia, who was scheduled to appear at the Baltimore Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, first stopped at a news conference outside the building, escorted by a group of supporters chanting “We are all Kilmar!”
“I stand before you a free man and I want you to remember me this way, with my head held up high,” Abrego Garcia said through a translator. “I come here today with so much hope and I thank God who has been with me since the start with my family.”
He urged people to keep fighting.
“I stand here today with my head held high and I will continue to fight and stand firm against all of the injustices this government has done upon me,” Abrego Garcia said. “Regardless of this administration, I believe this is a country of laws and I believe that this injustice will come to an end.”
After Abrego Garcia spoke, he went through security at the field office, escorted by supporters.
The agency freed him just before 5 p.m. on Thursday in response to a ruling from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland, who wrote federal authorities detained him after his return to the United States without any legal basis.
Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager to join his brother, who had become a U.S. citizen. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, where he faces danger from a gang that targeted his family.
While he was allowed to live and work in the U.S. under ICE supervision, he was not given residency status. Earlier this year, he was mistakenly deported and held in a notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison despite having no criminal record.
Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, Trump’s Republican administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges and asked a federal judge there to dismiss them.
The 2019 settlement found he had a “well founded fear” of danger in El Salvador if he was deported there. So instead ICE has been seeking to deport him to a series of African countries. Abrego Garcia has sued, claiming the Trump administration is illegally using the removal process to punish him for the public embarrassment caused by his deportation.
In her order releasing Abrego Garcia, Xinis wrote that federal authorities “did not just stonewall” the court, “They affirmatively misled the tribunal.” Xinis also rejected the government’s argument that she lacked jurisdiction to intervene on a final removal order for Abrego Garcia, because she found no final order had been filed.
ICE freed Abrego Garcia from Moshannon Valley Processing Center, about 115 miles (185 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh, on Thursday just before the deadline Xinis gave the government to provide an update on Abrego Garcia's release.
He returned home to Maryland a few hours later.
Check-ins are how ICE keeps track of some people who are released by the government to pursue asylum or other immigration cases as they make their way through a backlogged court system. The appointments were once routine but many people have been detained at their check-ins since the start of President Donald Trump's second term.
Abrego Garcia's attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said he’s prepared to defend his client against further deportation efforts.
“The government still has plenty of tools in their toolbox, plenty of tricks up their sleeve,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said, adding he fully expects the government to again take steps to deport his client. “We’re going to be there to fight to make sure there is a fair trial.”
The Department of Homeland Security sharply criticized Xinis' order and vowed to appeal, calling the ruling “naked judicial activism” by a judge appointed during the Obama administration.
“This order lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s assistant secretary.
Sandoval-Moshenberg said the judge made it clear that the government can’t detain someone indefinitely without legal authority and that his client “has endured more than anyone should ever have to.”
Abrego Garcia has also applied for asylum in the U.S. in immigration court.
Abrego Garcia was hit with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling charges when the U.S. government brought him back from El Salvador. Prosecutors alleged he accepted money to transport within the United States people who were in the country illegally.
The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Body camera footage from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.
A Department of Homeland Security agent testified at an earlier hearing that he did not begin investigating the traffic stop until after the U.S. Supreme Court said in April that the Trump administration must work to bring back Abrego Garcia.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia waits to enter the building for a mandatory check at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, after he was released from detention on Thursday under a judge's order. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Kilmar Abrego Garcia speaks at a rally before a mandatory check at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, after he was released from detention on Thursday under a judge's order. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Kilmar Abrego Garcia listens with is brother Cesar Abrego Garcia during a rally ahead of a mandatory check at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, after he was released from detention on Thursday under a judge's order. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Kilmar Abrego Garcia speaks during a rally ahead of a mandatory check at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, after he was released from detention on Thursday under a judge's order. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, center, and his brother Cesar Abrego Garcia, left, arrive at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore, Aug. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, File)
Kilmar Abrego García arrives to his home in Beltsville, Md., Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, after being released from ICE custody. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Kilmar Abrego García arrives to his home in Beltsville, Md., Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, after being released from ICE custody. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Kilmar Abrego García arrives to his home in Beltsville, Md., Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, after being released from ICE custody. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
