There is a certain kind of person who believes that sports are pure. These are the same people who think that politicians actually want to help them or that the weather guy really knows when it will rain. I find these people charming in the same way I find a dog chasing its own tail charming. They are completely unaware of how the world actually works. Today, the world of sports fans is in a state of fake shock because a former Olympic snowboarder named Ryan Wedding has been arrested. The police say he was running a massive drug business. To the average person, this is a tragedy. To me, it is the most logical thing I have ever heard.

Let us look at the facts. Ryan Wedding was an Olympian. He represented Canada. He spent his youth sliding down cold mountains on a piece of wood for the entertainment of people sitting on their couches. He was trained to be the fastest, the strongest, and the most daring. He was told that winning was everything. Then, one day, the cameras stopped flashing. The cheers went away. He was left with a set of skills that the regular world does not really need. Unless you are a mountain rescue worker, being an expert snowboarder is not a job. It is a hobby that costs a lot of money.

So, what does a high-performance athlete do when the game ends? He looks for a new game. And in our modern world, the most profitable game is the one that the police try to stop. The skills are the same. You need to manage a team. You need to move goods across borders. You need to handle extreme stress. Most importantly, you need to be okay with the fact that everything could go wrong in a second. Wedding simply traded the snow on the mountain for the snow that people put in their noses. It is a lateral move in the world of high-stakes business.

I find the reaction from law enforcement quite funny. They talk about this arrest like they have just saved the soul of the nation. Two officials spoke to the news about how violent this group was. They want us to see them as the heroes in a movie. But this is not a movie. It is a cycle. For every kingpin that gets caught, three more are waiting in line for their turn at the throne. The demand for the product does not go away just because a former athlete gets put in handcuffs. The police are just actors in a play that never ends. They get a win, they get a headline, and then they go back to work while the prices on the street go up for a week. It is a performance for the masses.

We must also talk about the Olympics themselves. We pretend these games are about 'peace' and 'international friendship.' In reality, they are a giant machine for making money and boosting the egos of national leaders. We take young people, break their bodies for our amusement, and then act surprised when they do not want to go work in a cubicle for forty years. When a man like Wedding is accused of running a drug empire, it is a sign that he understood the world better than his fans did. He knew that the gold medal was just a piece of metal, but power and money are real.

It is deeply cynical, I know. But look at the situation without the filter of the nightly news. A man who was trained to be a predator on the slopes became a predator in the market. He used his discipline to build something large and successful, even if it was illegal. The bureaucracy of the sports world and the bureaucracy of the legal world are now fighting over his legacy. They want to strip away his Olympic titles as if that matters. Taking away a title from years ago does not change the fact that he allegedly outsmarted the system for a long time.

I have seen this story many times before. The world loves a fallen hero. We love to watch someone reach the top and then fall into the mud. It makes us feel better about our own boring lives. We say, 'At least I am not a drug lord,' while we struggle to pay our bills. But we should be asking why our society makes the drug trade so much more attractive than a regular life for people who have already reached the top of their field. The answer is simple: we live in a world that only cares about the result. We don't care how you get the money, as long as you have it. Until you get caught, of course. Then, everyone pretends they knew you were bad all along.

In the end, Ryan Wedding is just another example of the theater of the absurd. He went from the white snow of the Olympics to the white powder of the streets. The government gets a trophy arrest, the news gets a story, and the public gets to feel a moment of moral superiority. Nothing has changed. The world is still a mess, and the next 'hero' is probably planning their next big move right now. I told you so.