One of the FBI’s top ten most wanted criminals has finally been apprehended. Canadian snowboarder Ryan Wedding, who competed in the 2002 Winter Olympics, was arrested Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026 in Mexico.
Wedding gained a spot on the list for allegedly orchestrating a transitional drug trafficking network. This involved shipping hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico and Southern California to Canada and throughout the United States, along with his involvement in multiple murders and attempted murder. He has since pleaded not guilty. He is also wanted by authorities in Canada for drug-related charges.
Wedding was born in 1981 in Thunder Bay, Ontario. His grandparents owned a ski mountain and his uncle, Craig Spiess, was the coach for the Canadian national women’s ski team. Born into a family of skiers, Wedding was destined to be on the slopes. He started his career on the Canadian national snowboarding team at 15 years old. During his career, he traveled around the world to compete, including visits to Italy, France, Chile, Austria, and Japan.
Before gaining attention as a drug trafficker, Wedding was a Canadian snowboarder that competed in the men’s parallel giant slalom event in the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. He did not win any Olympic medals in his career.
After his career as a snowboarder, Wedding decided to make money in a different way. He moved to Vancouver and enrolled in Simon Fraser University. In 2009, Rolling Stone reported that Wedding took a job as a bouncer at a night club leading him to the drug world.
In 2006, Wedding was named in a search warrant in Maple Ridge, British Columbia for suspicion of growing large quantities of marijuana. Later in 2010, he was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison for attempting to buy cocaine from a government agent in 2008. While in court, Wedding pleaded his case, explaining, “What I did was completely out of character for me, and it is a personal mission of mine to rebuild my reputation. As an athlete, I was always taught that there are no second chances, and, well, I’m here asking for exactly that.” Wedding was released in 2011.
After his release, Wedding fled to Mexico joining one of the largest drug cartels Sinaloa Cartel and becoming a high-ranked member. Then, in October of 2024, federal prosecutors announced the indictment of him for running a criminal enterprise, cocaine trafficking and murder. The enterprise was believed to begin around 2011.
