The Olympics’ website says very little about Ryan Wedding
The former Olympic snowboarder turned alleged drug lord was arrested last night in Mexico
The Milano Cortina Winter Olympics are two weeks away. We’re looking forward to cheering for Canada’s Olympic athletes—and for some fictional hockey players, too—but there’s one name you probably won’t hear much of during the games.
Related: The story of Ryan Wedding, Canada’s Olympic snowboarder turned drug lord
We’re not sure when this edit was made, but the Olympics’ official online biography of Ryan Wedding, the former Olympic snowboarder turned alleged drug lord who was arrested last night, shares little detail of his athletic achievement. Instead, its focus is a brief rundown of his alleged criminal history.
“In 2006, Ryan Wedding was named in a search warrant for a Maple Ridge, British Columbia (property) that was investigated for growing large quantities of marijuana, but he was never charged. However, in May 2010 he was convicted of attempting to buy cocaine from a US government agent in 2008, and was sentenced to four years in prison,” is all Wedding’s biography on the Olympics’ website says.
Wedding competed in the 2022 Salt Lake City Olympics in the Parallel Giant Slalom category.
Per more recent developments, he is alleged to have run a transnational drug trafficking operation, and to have orchestrated the murder of a key witness, allegedly following the guidance of his lawyer. Until Wedding’s reported arrest last night in Mexico, he had been on the FBI’s list of ten most wanted fugitives after more than ten years of hiding from law enforcement.
Related: The FBI seized a $13-million Mercedes in connection to its Ryan Wedding investigation
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
