You couldn't sell me a movie about an ex-Olympic snowboarder from Canada turned cartel kingpin storing $40 million of MotoGP bikes stored in Mexico because it's just too mental. But that's exactly the story of Ryan James Wedding, one of the FBI's most wanted criminals, as told in a recent FBI Los Angeles X account post. But that's only the headline of this story because when you dive into the intricacies of what bikes he owned, the questions of how they came into his possession come flooding behind.
The 44-year-old Canadian national obviously had a thing for GP bikes, but a particular liking for Ducatis. The collection seized by the FBI, which the Bureau believes Wedding owns, included several Ducati MotoGP bikes belonging to Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Andrea Dovizioso, Loris Capirossi, and Andrea Iannone. But the collection dives deeper into the annals of GP-winning motorcycles.
Wedding also had Marc Marquez's Moto2 championship-winning bike from 2012 and Rossi's Aprilia 125cc championship-winning bike from 1997. That's at least seven Ducati MotoGP rides, a couple more GP bikes from the lower classes, a load of Scott Russell's ZXR750s, and some yet-to-be identified bikes—although one looks like a GSX-R 750RR RK—making up the 62-motorcycle collection. Seeing all these bikes in one place would be a dream come true for a GP fan, but when you realize the conditions they were kept in, it'd feel more like a nightmare.
