Here’s a bizarre story, of a former Olympic snowboarder from Canada who became a drug lord in Mexico and is now in U.S. custody.
Source: CP Photo/COC/Andre Forget
Ryan Wedding is a Canadian Olympic snowboarder turned drug kingpin, but his crime career is over for now. Wedding turned himself in at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and is now in the U.S. awaiting trial.
You may have wondered about the surname “Wedding”, I hadn’t heard it before. It actually derives from a place called “Wadding” in Yorkshire, England.
Ryan James Wadding was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, in 1981 and competed for Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics (Salt Lake City) as a snowboarder.
After that, Wedding became a drug trafficker and made quite a name for himself, winding up in Mexico in the Sinaloa Cartel.
Wedding ran an operation transporting cocaine from Colombia through Mexico to the U.S. and Canada. His operation would move it by truck from Mexico to Los Angeles.
By 2005, Wedding made it to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
Wedding’s FBI wanted poster reads “Ryan James Wedding is wanted for allegedly running and participating in a transnational drug trafficking operation that routinely shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and Southern California, to Canada, and other locations in the United States. Additionally, it is alleged that Wedding was involved in orchestrating multiple murders in furtherance of these drug crimes.”
The Canadian drug lord used the aliases “James Conrad King” and “Jesse King”, as well as a number of colorful nicknames: “Giant”, “Public Enemy”, “Boss”, “Buddy”, “Grande”, “El Jefe”, “El Guerro” and “El Toro”.
On January 22nd, 2026, Wedding turned himself in at the new billion-dollar U.S. embassy in Mexico City. Negotiations had been going on several weeks previous.
So why did he turn himself in and what does the deal consist of? Is Wedding going to rat out a lot of other people?
Another curiousity is that the day he turned himself in, FBI Director Kash Patel was at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, on an unpublicized visit. Hmm, that’s interesting.
Here’s a photo of U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ron Johnson, Mexican Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch, and FBI Director Kash Patel.
On the 23rd, Wedding was flown to California (landing in, coincidentally, Ontario, California) to face charges on cocaine trafficking and murder.
Let’s see how this case turns out.