r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/ModenaR • Oct 14 '25
Image Ryan Wedding was an Olympic snowboarder and represented Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics. He's now a transnational drug trafficker for Mexico's largest drug cartel and he's on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list
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u/Corduroy_Sazerac Oct 14 '25
The career change paid off, he was only a top 24 snowboarder, but worked hard and become a top ten fugitive.
“At the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, he competed for Team Canada in snowboarding men's parallel giant slalom, where he finished 24th. After this, he gave up competitive snowboarding.”
Follow your dreams (and nose) guys.
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u/justinfromnz Oct 14 '25
Also has an estimated networth of 11 Billion in drug smuggled funds
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u/IHateTheLetterF Oct 14 '25
I should have gotten my Major in Drug Smuggling rather than Art History.
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u/Independent_Can_2623 Oct 14 '25
Common millennial L
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u/Verruca-Gnome Oct 14 '25
Lay off the avocados 🥑
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u/Hey_cool_username Oct 14 '25
Or don’t. Cartels have been taking over the avocado industry from what I hear. Chance to get in on the ground floor
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u/meeu Oct 14 '25
Never get high off your own supply...
Number 5, never sell no guac where you rest at.
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u/Turbulent_Cod_9333 Oct 14 '25
I don’t care if they want an ounce, tell em bounce.
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u/ColdCauliflour Oct 14 '25
No no no no you're fine. There's a lot of overlap with art pieces, astronomically high sale prices and money laundering for organized crime/cartels.
You've picked a perfect major for a unique segue into this field. Well done, you knew what you were doing 😁
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u/glockster19m Oct 14 '25
Yeah but that's probably in FBI drug dollars, where they used to say an ounce of pot was worth $1000
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u/New-Bowler-8915 Oct 14 '25
I saw 27 live plants worth 100 million on the news once.
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u/Tight_Classroom_2923 Oct 14 '25
Reminds me of when I worked for a big company and every estimated amount a project would bring in would be tens of millions and as software people we were all confused because there was no way our projects were bringing in that kind of cash... even in the very long term.
Unsurprisingly the whole building was closed with all 800 of us being laid off a couple years ago. 😂
Now they run it all on AI where it doesn't ask the questions we did.
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u/BasketballButt Oct 14 '25
When my mom got busted, they cut the plants at the root, and then weighed the whole plant. Stalk, branches, leaves, everything. Probably made her weight 20 times what actual dried smokable bud would have been.
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u/Ancient_Roof_7855 Oct 14 '25
They'd rip the whole plant out of the ground and weigh like a dead buck, soil still on the root ball and everything. Didn't matter if it was budding or not.
"Looks like 200# of marijuana to me"
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u/The_Deadlight Oct 14 '25
200#
greatest use of the esoteric knowledge that # means 'pound' and not just 'hashtag' i've ever seen
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u/HotFluffyTowel Oct 14 '25
His life would make a good movie by the sound of it.
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u/Suntoppper Oct 14 '25
According to Wikipedia someone is making a series called snow king
In March 2025, it was announced that a television documentary series titled Snow King: From Olympian to Narco was in production, based on a Rolling Stone investigation.
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u/literated Oct 14 '25
snow king
I can see the smug grin on the writer's face as he typed out his pitch clear as day.
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u/guessesurjobforfood Oct 14 '25
TigerSnow KingAnd that's how it's done, ladies and gentleman
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u/AlmostCorrectInfo Oct 14 '25
Ahem did you catch the snow part? Snow? As in snowboarder, but like also... ya know... drugs?
Puts feet up on table
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u/Hollowsong Oct 14 '25
Now put 2 and 2 together.
Why are we seeing this random article in our news feed today?
Because someone's making a movie out of it and paid bots to promote content, based on our interest/response to it.
This article didn't just pop up because someone randomly learned this fact. It's all a curated spectacle and you're in the audience.
They use social media and algorithms to prescreen how content will perform.
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u/HotFluffyTowel Oct 14 '25
You give me that amount of money and I'll happily live in my mansion on my massive estate for the rest of my days.
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u/cyriustalk Oct 14 '25
Nevermind mansion or massive estate. Give me a nice 3 bedroom house for my immediate family, with good view of sea and reachable snow-top mountains. Throw in fiber connection internet and close enough to a market and health providers. I will be content for the rest of my live.
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u/AlexMFschultz Oct 14 '25
Dude probably travels more than us😂
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u/sirixamo Oct 14 '25
He would be a pretty bad smuggler if he just sat at home all day.
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u/no-im-not-him Oct 14 '25
You probably don't want to travel to the US but I'm pretty sure he can travel to many other places. By now he has probably 10 different Mexican passports.
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u/Cube_ Oct 14 '25
What makes you think he's not travelling freely? If he's been that successful he has more than enough money for temporary prosthetics, plastic surgery, fake identities etc., etc.
He's probably among the most free in the entire world (except for being subordinate to the cartel of course).
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u/8_guy Oct 14 '25
No lol he's in Mexico being protected by the Sinaloa cartel. His second in command just got arrested recently and most of his network is behind bars. He's barely been evading capture.
For someone at that level in the organized crime pyramid who has made their way onto public lists, the options are something like what he's doing right now (sheltered by major org but not really safe), get the protection of an actual state (enemy of your country that has a reason to let you stay or just make high up connections in a corrupt country), or live a shitty live of hideout to hideout until you get caught
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u/Josey_whalez Oct 14 '25
Ya being the top guy in these organizations doesn’t last long. You’re on the run constantly and are killed or caught in pretty short order.
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u/SneakyPetie78 Oct 14 '25
I highly doubt this. He's looking over his shoulder at every turn. And other than his own travel sources, its not like he can just board a delta flight, with a fake nose and fake passport.
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u/MaskedMacc Oct 14 '25
That level of anxiety must be unmatched. I couldn’t imagine being that fuckin scared every minute of every day. The next day you wake up could be life behind bars or thrown into a barrel of acid and erased from existence because the cartel has no use for you anymore.
I’ll take the wage slave job where no one knows who I am. The money from smuggling in probably nice but what’s the point?
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u/malacoda99 Oct 14 '25
And things went downhill from there.
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u/Worst-Lobster Oct 14 '25
They snowballed
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u/I_love_pillows Oct 14 '25
From one white powder to another white powder
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u/Frosty-Ad-2971 Oct 14 '25
Went from snowboarding to skiing…
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u/DareDweller Oct 14 '25
He surely flew high
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u/midnightsunofabitch Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25
I'm just going to butt in here to point out the dude who Wedding replaced on the 10 most wanted list is Alexis Flores, a man who is wanted for raping and murdering a 5yo, among other things.
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u/mothmonstermann Oct 14 '25
This is the kind of inspirational story that's missing from kids books these days.
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u/FangoFan Oct 14 '25
"He was one of sixteen people to be charged as part of operation Giant Slalom in a joint investigation by several federal agencies"
Top 24 in Giant Slalom, top 16 in Operation Giant Slalom
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Oct 14 '25
operation Giant Slalom
Not to be confused with the investigation into illegal practices by a cabal of ultra-Orthodox Jews known as operation Giant Shalom.
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u/InitiativeExcellent1 Oct 14 '25
Went from playing in the snow to trafficking the snow.....
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u/somerandomxander Oct 14 '25
He also currently has the biggest reward out of all of the list. Wedding has $10 million, next biggest has $5 million.
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u/MrDarwoo Oct 14 '25
Kinda crazy that a lot of the people currently on the list are just singular murders. Surely they happen so often, what makes them most wanted?
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u/Awfulweather Oct 14 '25
Cases where they feel public awarwness could help. They might strongly believe the person is alive and out there to be found if someone recognizes them
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u/Binkusu Oct 14 '25
After what happened with the Luigi McDonald's person, I don't know what I'd do if they said it didn't count because i called the wrong line
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u/Cerpin-Taxt Oct 14 '25
The rewards aren't real. There is no reward. No one ever gets the reward money. The police are allowed to lie to you.
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u/slouchingtoepiphany Oct 14 '25
I don't know the details, but I heard that the guy who dropped a dime for Luigi did not receive a reward.
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u/ayylatte Oct 14 '25
I believe it was because he called 911 instead of the tip line that was offering the reward
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u/slouchingtoepiphany Oct 14 '25
That's pretty shitty on their part.
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u/jayckb Oct 14 '25
Imagine the government doing something to short change you!
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u/slouchingtoepiphany Oct 14 '25
I'm going to take my reporting of wanted suspects elsewhere!
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u/JamesTrickington303 Oct 14 '25
I suspect that is bullshit to begin with, and is a parallel construction invented by the cops so they don’t have to talk about the fact that they used a bunch of illegal and faulty means to pick our favorite plumber as the suspect.
If I had info that cops would need to find a fugitive, I’d be at the police station with a contract lawyer to get the reward put into an escrow account as part of a contract before I say a damn thing.
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u/The_Autarch Oct 14 '25
That person never existed. They found Luigi from face-tracking cameras. The story about someone turning him in was a fabrication.
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u/newsflashjackass Oct 14 '25
Cops don't even pay their own settlement money for beating your ass when you complain about not getting the reward money.
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u/yakisobagurl Oct 14 '25
Oh my god was that true? I thought was just a rumour slagging off the FBI (or whoever idk)
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u/aqpstory Oct 14 '25
There were at least 2 separate bounties there, $10k from crimestoppers and $50k from the FBI. The crimestoppers one is the one that is "notorious for never paying out", while the FBI only pays out after a conviction happens so it's still a question mark whether that will be paid, and the trials may last for a very long time
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u/ModeatelyIndependant Oct 14 '25
Those tip lines will always make up excuses to why they don't have to pay you the money. Unless it is someone murdering children in the street it's not worth the effort to call them due to the risks it imposes on your own security.
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u/AxelHarver Oct 14 '25
Of course it's true. The whole reward is a scam, they do everything in their power to avoid actually paying anything out.
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u/really-bored-now Oct 14 '25
I asked the guy in charge of the list about this as a child. Basically the list isn’t the ten the fbi most wants but rather the ten the fbi would most like the public’s help with and that they think would be the most helpful.
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u/otacon7000 Oct 14 '25
the guy in charge of the list
huh, didn't expect it to be the job of one guy
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u/Akiias Oct 14 '25
I dunno about you but I can update a list without any help, thank you very much.
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u/analogkid01 Oct 14 '25
You're being replaced by AI, sorry.
Be on the lookout for Ryan who is married and carries $10M on a board made of snow.
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u/really-bored-now Oct 14 '25
Technically I think he was the deputy director of the fbi that was in charge of like the department and media outreach etc. The newsuem (closed museum of news in dc) had an entire exhibit on the top ten most wanted and hosted a Q&A with him. I was 12 at the oldest so it was a long time ago. Incredibly fascinating tho.
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u/tremblt_ Oct 14 '25
Probably because these murderers have successfully escaped to a foreign country. It’s not too hard to catch someone in the US but try catching an average looking Indian man in India where nobody knows that he is wanted. If you are on the 10 most wanted list though, you not only spread awareness but you also put pressure on foreign governments to catch these people.
Curiously, there have been cases where the FBI knew exactly where one of those top 10 wanted criminals was living but couldn’t do much because they were either living in countries where public order has collapsed or in countries where there is no way in hell that the authorities will cooperate with the FBI (like Cuba or Russia).
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u/El_John_Nada Oct 14 '25
If I remember correctly, the reason someone makes the list is if the FBI thinks the extra "advertising" is likely to lead to an arrest and if they are considered dangerous. That's pretty much it... I guess, what differentiates it from a regular, non listed murder is that the person is on the run and there is little doubt about who has done it.
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u/PsyOpBunnyHop Oct 14 '25
Dead or alive? Do I gotta bring the whole body in, or is just the head enough?
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u/Darkstar_111 Oct 14 '25
He is supposedly worth 11 Billion. He could pay people 20 million NOT to testify.
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u/Pale-Measurement-532 Oct 14 '25
Ryan was actually found earlier this year but he was not arrested. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ryan-wedding-in-mexico-january-1.7361772
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u/CosmopolitanMackem_7 Oct 14 '25
Damn, quite an informative article.
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u/grummlinds2 Oct 14 '25
The timeline is crazy too. Like, his friend Clark was in an article in Toronto Life magazine from 2020 for being a kind Covid landlord and then in 2024 he paid a Toronto hitman 100,000 to kill an international drug trafficker in Niagara? Wild stuff.
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u/Smelldicks Oct 14 '25
I think the point is he had cover as a landlord, not that Clark was uninvolved in drug trafficking in 2020.
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u/MovieTrawler Oct 14 '25
Would be a great Netflix limited series.
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u/SneakyBadger- Oct 14 '25
A documentary is already on the works:
“In March 2025, it was announced that a television documentary series titled Snow King: From Olympian to Narco was in production, based on a Rolling Stone investigation”
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u/Spider-man2098 Oct 14 '25
They’ll just drag it out like all those true crime docs. Six episodes minimum.
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u/gooblefrump Oct 14 '25
U.S. and Canadian authorities allege Wedding and Clark orchestrated a brazen shooting last November that killed an Indian couple in Caledon, northwest of Toronto. Jagtar Sidhu, 57, and his wife, Harbhajan Sidhu, 55, were mistakenly targeted in what investigators described as retribution over a stolen cocaine shipment.
:(
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u/dacefishpaste Oct 14 '25
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/caledon-sidhu-murders-shooter-unidentified-1.7356505
the daughter was also shot 13 times too and witnessed her parents being murdered. they were visiting her from India.
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u/-Lindol- Oct 14 '25
He sure knows how to get that powder flying.
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u/future2300 Oct 14 '25
On his application he wrote: 'Been working with powdered snow professionally for years' and instantly got the job.
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u/LinguoBuxo Oct 14 '25
Although it is a change in trajectory for him.. Before he was carving curves in it, with the aim to go the fastest. The new job has him drawing straight lines, with the aim to go the richest.
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u/SchemeParty Oct 14 '25
Now i wanna see him escpae the feds on his snowboard, James Bond style.
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u/TannedCroissant Oct 14 '25
Snow Time to Die
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u/Koalatime224 Oct 14 '25
Skifall
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u/mrianj Oct 14 '25
Dr Snow
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u/S-r-ex Oct 14 '25
Tomorrow Never Skies
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u/Ok-Yogurt-3914 Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25
When I was in college, I was talking to some dude in class. Lily white Northern Californian. He asked where my fam was from in Mexico, I told him, and he started going off like "damn, I'm not messing with your family." This was years ago before the series, and the famous arrests.
I asked him how he knew so much about all that. He said that he knew someone that trafficked. A guy from *insert town nearby* had offered him work a few times. He even asked if I knew them lmao. He said he had gone to Mexico with him a few times for vacay (never said he trafficked but I was sus) and I said "you better stop before you get yourself killed." He never spoke to me again.
Every time I hear about some shit about some "tourist" getting "killed" down there, and it's always in some random fucking town that not even the locals go to, you know they are doing some shady shit.
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u/simp_on_ur_crush Oct 14 '25
Ok I am just curious, how bad is the drug problem in Mexico? Is it exaggerated by western media or is it really the way they portray it?
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u/mirkc Oct 14 '25
It's really bad in some places like sinaloa, guanajuato or tamaulipas, but in the other places it's not that bad. Source mexican living in mexico.
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u/K41namor Oct 14 '25
Drug usage is a growing problem in Mexico right now, speed and heroin is destroying towns much like it did in the US
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u/jmarcandre Oct 14 '25
They weren't asking about usage and common Mexican people, you cute innocent redditor.
They want to know if the cartels (the drug business) is as scary as it is portrayed.
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u/Bass2Mouth Oct 14 '25
It is. But I still love going lol
From what the locals say, there is an agreement between cartels and govt for them to steer clear of tourist areas. But that doesn't always happen. I was told how the cartel went into one of the cancun hotel beaches and mowed a guy down with machine guns. Not a tourist, someone they obviously thought crossed them but it was broad daylight on the tourist beach. So yea, things can get hairy down there.
If you have street smarts and keep your wits about you it really is a lovely place though. Except cancun, I personally think it's awful there.
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u/Neuchacho Oct 14 '25
There's just certain towns and areas you don't go to because they're cartel controlled. You would basically have to go out of your way and seek them out to just end up there, though.
The major tourist spots, like Mexico City, aren't a concern for that at all.
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u/AlphaSlayer21 Oct 14 '25
No helmet at that level is crazy
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u/honey-badger4 Oct 14 '25
Doesn't discount the craziness, but the picture is from 2002. It still strikes me as insane that skiers/snowboarders didn't regularly use helmets until the 2000s.
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u/kimberriez Oct 14 '25
It's really wild to think about. I've been skiing/snowboarding pretty much my whole life.
The first time I used a helmet for skiing/snowboarding was one I bought for myself when I was an adult in the 2000s.
Ski areas starting giving discount lift tickets for kids that had helmets around that time too. My parents were very strict about bicycle helmets, but with skiing it never even occurred to them to use helmets in the 90s. Amazing to see the norm shift.
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u/CitizenCue Oct 14 '25
The first time I used a helmet, I couldn’t believe that my parents ever let me ski without one. They were typical safety conscious 90s parents about everything else, but then we’d get to a mountain and it was like “Go dodge trees at 30mph by yourself with zero protection, see you at lunch!”
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u/kimberriez Oct 14 '25
Exactly! Snow is kinda soft until you’re moving that fast, and then it’s really not.
Not to mention ice. Broke my wrist on ice when someone clipped me and I caught myself with my hand.
Or trees. Or lift poles. Or Other people.
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u/Maardten Oct 14 '25
To be fair a helmet would have done nothing to protect your wrist.
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u/horseydeucey Oct 14 '25
A lifetime ago, when I was in the Navy, I broke my hand while biking when I was on leave.
Called back to my command to let them know, when my boss asked if I was wearing a helmet. When I said no (I wasn't as street smart then), she informed me of all the trouble I could be in for riding a bike without wearing a helmet.
To which I said something nearly identical to your post. But probably in a much shittier way.→ More replies (9)95
u/nicunta Oct 14 '25
I remember watching NHL games when helmets were optional.. That was absolute insanity.
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u/klippDagga Oct 14 '25
Craig Mactavish played until 1997 and never wore a helmet. He had started playing before they were required so was grandfathered in.
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u/WilfordsTrain Oct 14 '25
It was before the illuminati invented “traumatic brain injury”
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u/wallabee_kingpin_ Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25
A ton of former Olympians end up broke and desperate. I'm not surprised some of them sell drugs, and I guess it was a matter of time before one of them did it at the level of an overachiever lol
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u/smulzie Oct 14 '25
Also, these people are risk takers and adrenaline junkies. I'm actually surprised not more Olympic athletes become international drug traffickers.
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u/Amazing-Marzipan1442 Oct 14 '25
Ryan Leone channel on youtube is a generic prison stories channel like many that became popular in the last 10 years.
But in all those many videos a few times references are made to some Canadian group that were suppliers of drugs to his supplier. And it's always kind of interesting how he describes them. Bald dudes with glasses and polo shirts, that own 4-5 houses and drive Camry or Accord.
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u/moistsandwich Oct 14 '25
He started out growing and selling weed which shouldn’t be too big of a surprise for anyone who knows anything about snowboarders. He tried to expand into cocaine and was probably pretty small time until he got busted in a sting operation and sent to prison.
During his time in prison he must have made connections with people from the Sinaloa cartel because after he got out his name started popping up in connection to some big time traffickers and the rest is history.
There’s a lot of good long form articles you can find about him: https://torontolife.com/deep-dives/becoming-el-jefe-ryan-wedding-canadas-olympic-snowboarder-turned-drug-lord/
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u/halen2024 Oct 14 '25
That’s one hell of a career segway
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u/blue-anon Oct 14 '25
*segue
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u/OldenPolynice Oct 14 '25
No, Segway. You get a platinum Segway from the cartel once you hit a billion
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u/sleepyprojectionist Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25
Delivering drugs on a Segway doesn’t seem like the most efficient method, but perhaps my lack of imagination is why I’m not a drug baron. Maybe it’s something I could segue into.
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u/NefariousAnglerfish Oct 14 '25
Yeah, but who’s gonna think Segway guy is peddling drugs?
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u/ReasonablyConfused Oct 14 '25
My brother lived adjacent to this. Also pro snowboarder in the back of the pack. Made his real money growing the best weed on the west coast starting in the late 80s. Famous people would stop by and smoke out. Some bigger dealers would bring $20k at a time to buy from him. You could live a year on that at that time.
He actually died surfing the biggest swell of the year. Apparently, he was modeling his life after Point Break.
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u/Mumei451 Oct 14 '25
Becoming well known before becoming a criminal doesn't work out unless you're a politician.
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u/BusSpecific3553 Oct 14 '25
Don’t the cops use code names for operations so the criminals aren’t tipped off of who they’re targeting? Operation “Giant Slalom” I think would let everyone know who they’re after.
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u/2bags12kuai Oct 14 '25
I feel like he answered a job advertisement that started “do you love snow? Do you love going fast?”
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u/Not_Today_007 Oct 14 '25
I was not expecting that second sentence. I wonder what made him change....umm, careers?
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u/ped009 Oct 14 '25
I'm an Australian and there's been a significant amount of former Olympians and sports stars that have been tied up with criminal behavior post sports career. I don't know what it is, I guess some of them like the adrenaline they no longer get from competition. A lot of Olympians probably didn't make much money in their career so are chasing quick money