Former Olympic Snowboarder Competing in FBI’s ‘Most Wanted’ Decathlon, Judges Report He’s ‘Crushing the powder Slalom’

#Dreams

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Olympic Dreams do come true.

In a plot twist so bizarre it’s got sports analysts dusting off their “Where Are They Now?” binders and Netflix execs greenlighting Narcos: Slalom Edition, Ryan Wedding—Canada’s forgotten snowboarding “eh-lister”—has officially swapped Olympic dreams for a starring role on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted: Extreme Sports Edition.” The 43-year-old Thunder Bay native, who once dazzled the world by finishing 24th in the 2002 Salt Lake City Games (a result so mediocre his mom taped over it with Survivor: Borneo), is now accused of shredding a different kind of powder: international cocaine trafficking. Say hello to the “Snowblower”—a man whose career arc proves that when life gives you a snowboard, you trade it for a private jet and a cartel Rolodex.

Once upon a time, Wedding was just a floppy-haired Canuck whose biggest claim to fame was narrowly avoiding a snowbank during qualifiers—think less “Shaun White” and more “Shaun White’s cousin who works at Tim Hortons.” But on Thursday, March 6, 2025, the FBI quietly slid his name onto their Most Wanted list, elbowing out alleged child murderer Alexis Flores faster than you can say “sponsorship deal gone wrong.” “Ryan Wedding went from grabbing air on the slopes to grabbing kilos in the streets,” quipped FBI Assistant Director Akil Davis, who reportedly spent his morning yoga session perfecting that zinger over a kale smoothie. Sources say Wedding’s now chilling in Mexico under the Sinaloa cartel’s “all-inclusive protection plan,” where he’s teaching drug mules how to “carve the mountains” with a backpack full of blow and a GoPro for flair.

Powder Days to Pablo Days: The Cocaine Comeback Story Nobody Asked For

The feds allege Wedding built a drug empire so slick it makes Jeff Bezos’s two-day shipping look like a carrier pigeon with a limp. Using a fleet of trucks, planes, and a suspiciously profitable Taco Bell franchise (five stars on Yelp for “extra spicy deliveries”), he’s accused of smuggling “hundreds of kilos” of Colombian snow into North America. That’s right—this guy’s still obsessed with white powder, only now it comes with a side of AK-47s instead of a lift ticket. “He’s basically Tony Montana with better outerwear,” said one DEA insider, who’s clearly angling for a cameo in the inevitable true-crime docuseries.

But it’s not all tacos and trafficking. Wedding’s also charged with ordering hits with the precision of an Olympic judge deducting points for a wobbly landing. Take the tragic 2023 murder of Doug and Karen, a Canadian couple who just wanted to live their best maple-syrup-soaked lives. Mistaken for rival dealers, they were gunned down in what authorities call “an avalanche of death”—a phrase DEA agent Matthew Allen growled so dramatically you’d think he was auditioning for Law & Order: Frostbite Unit. “Unremitting, callous, and greed-driven,” Allen added, as Netflix producers texted Jason Momoa’s agent with “narco abs” pitch ideas faster than you can say “binge-worthy.”

From Gold Medal Dreams to Golden Handcuffs: A LinkedIn Nightmare

Wedding’s fall from “almost famous” to “infamous” is the kind of career pivot that’d make even LinkedIn cringe. After retiring from snowboarding—where his legacy was less “medal podium” and more “participation ribbon”—he enrolled at Simon Fraser University. There, he majored in Business Administration and minored in “How to Network with People Who Definitely Own Unregistered Vans.” A Rolling Stone exposé later revealed he moonlighted as a bouncer, rubbing elbows with underworld types who probably learned their trade from Grand Theft Auto tutorials. By 2004, cops were sniffing around his Maple Ridge marijuana grow-op—a side hustle so shady it vanished from the record faster than Wedding’s moral compass at a cartel happy hour.

A remnant of a better time for Ryan Wedding.

Then came 2010: Wedding tried buying cocaine from an undercover agent in a sting so predictable even Scooby-Doo’s Shaggy would’ve sniffed it out. “Zoinks, man, like, that’s a fed!” didn’t cross his mind, apparently. He spent four years in prison, where rumor has it he bench-pressed The Art of the Deal and brainstormed his next big idea: “What if Tony Hawk… but with more felonies?” Released in 2014, he hit the ground running—or rather, trafficking—turning Ontario’s Peel Region into a Grand Theft Auto expansion pack, complete with shootouts, stash houses, and a taco truck that’s now the stuff of narco legend.

Wanted: Dead or Shredded—The $10 Million Snow Angel

Today, Wedding faces life in prison alongside 15 accomplices in a case the U.S. Attorney’s office dubbed The Fast and the Furious: Frostbite Drift. He and his buddy Andrew Clarke allegedly turned Canada into a winter wonderland of crime, leaving authorities scrambling like snowboarders chasing the last chairlift. The U.S. State Department, terrified this might inspire a TikTok trend (#CocaineCarveChallenge), slapped a $10 million bounty on his head. “Can’t we just Venmo him to turn himself in?” muttered Secretary of State Marco Rubio, probably wishing he’d stayed in Florida sipping mojitos instead.

The FBI warns Wedding is “armed, dangerous, and probably still really good at snow angels,” which is the kind of threat that sounds adorable until you realize he’s got a Glock in one hand and a kilo in the other. Meanwhile, his Sinaloa hideout has locals whispering about “El Gringo Loco,” the guy who keeps trying to ollie over border walls while yelling, “YOLO, eh!”

Epilogue: Canada’s Breaking Bad or Just Bad at Breaking?

As the manhunt stretches into its second week, one question haunts us: Is Ryan Wedding a cautionary tale for washed-up Olympians, or just Canada’s answer to Walter White with worse hair and better poutine? Either way, his story proves that with enough grit, even a 24th-place finisher can podium in something—even if it’s the “World’s Dumbest Life Choices” finals. Will he be caught shredding the slopes of justice, or will he vanish into the Mexican sunset like a narco snowflake? Only time—and maybe a drone strike—will tell.

Stay tuned for next week’s installment: “Figure Skater Turned Fentanyl Queen—Why Triple Axels Are the New Cartel Calling Card.” Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned from Ryan Wedding, it’s that the only thing colder than a Canadian winter is the heart of a snowboarder gone rogue.

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