David Wilding-Davies’ life is the stuff of adventure novels or blockbuster movies. Having represented Canada at the Olympics and World Equestrian Games in eventing with a mount he bought when not yet a teenager, Wilding-Davies has also established a Zimbabwean coffee farm, was forced to flee the country’s violent and unstable political climate with a young family, and is now an author and successful entrepreneur.

The affable Wilding-Davies, 50, took some time with Horse Sport to share his fascinating story and, of course, chat about horses.

A Fairy-Tale Beginning For Wilding-Davies

Wilding-Davies grew up in Langley, BC, on a hobby farm owned by his parents, Peter and Michelle. He and his sister Emma spent “a huge amount of time mucking around with our ponies” during their childhood.

At age 12, he bought his first horse with money saved from raising chickens. That 16.1-hand, five-year-old chestnut Thoroughbred/Quarter Horse “ended up, of course, being just fantastic,” says Wilding-Davies. “His show name was Crusader.”

Originally a reluctant ranch mount with a penchant for bucking, George, as he was known around the barn, became one of the country’s most famous eventing horses. When Wilding-Davies was 18, the pair won the Canadian Championships and the next year, in 1985, they brought home team and individual gold medals from the North American Young Riders Championships. Third- and seventh-place finishes at the Rolex Three-Day Event in 1986 and 1987, respectively, and other triumphs led to a berth on the 1988 Olympics team in Seoul and two years later, the World Equestrian Games in Stockholm. Here, Crusader was “still strong and sound” despite being 17 years old, says Wilding-Davies, and they finished in 16th place individually.

He describes his mount as “the laziest horse you can imagine. He didn’t expend any extra energy.” But Wilding-Davies believes this was actually an ingredient to his success and longevity. In addition to the horse’s ability to jump well and his high level of endurance, “He also had the sort of mind that he was relaxed enough he could figure things out, just kind of work his way through all sorts of jumps and different combinations.”

It also helped that the duo had virtually grown up side-by-side. “By the time he got to competing internationally, he had a huge amount of experience. We had spent hours together doing everything,” says Wilding-Davies. “There’s having the right horse, then there’s having the right horse at the right time in life. You have to be very focused. It’s a very selfish time – you have to put all of your energies into competing and horses. I had that really good window where I had the right horse and it was the right time because I had no other commitments or distractions. I was able to kind of run with it.”

After WEG, Wilding-Davies retired his mount of a lifetime from eventing. He occasionally used him for team roping and together Crusader and Wilding-Davies’ father did some combined driving with him. “Tough as old boots,” Crusader lived to age 35. Wilding-Davies began teaching, training, and buying and selling horses. Knowing it would be nearly impossible to find another mount like Crusader, he thought to himself, “I really need to focus and get a career business going.”

Into … and Out of Africa

Wilding-Davies fell in love with the east African country of Zimbabwe while backpacking in the early 1990s. Bored of doing the tourist thing on one particular trip, he visited a tack shop in the capital, Harare, where he noticed a sign advertising a three-day event. Attending the show was a catalyst for the young man in many ways. “Some people recognized me and asked if I could teach,” Wilding-Davies recalls. “I spent probably 10 days teaching, riding, making friends.”

Many of his new acquaintances were farmers. He had always dreamt of becoming one himself. “They all said, ‘Come here – land is affordable, we’re growing valuable crops, labour is not expensive.’”

In 1998, Wilding-Davies, his wife Amy, and their infant son Max landed in Zimbabwe and a couple of years later, bought a fixer-upper coffee plantation in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands Chipinge district called Ashanti Farm. Wilding-Davies again found himself spending most days on horseback, this time for practicality’s sake. “Horses were the best way to get around your farm. You could take a motorbike, but you’d have to concentrate on where you’re going. On a horse, you could concentrate on the crops and move through the fields easily.”

His favourite horse was Teddy Bears’ Picnic. Mainly a good boy, according to Wilding-Davies, the horse did suffer from the occasional Thoroughbred spook. “It would frustrate me, because I would be daydreaming or looking at the coffee bushes or the monkeys in the trees, then he would shy and I would almost fall off.”

Wilding-Davies and Teddy also spent their days off together, hitting the polocrosse field at the local country club every Sunday – a gathering that brought the whole community together. “A nice thing about farming in Zimbabwe is that everybody had horses, everybody rode.”

Wilding-Davies and his family created a rewarding life, turning the once run-down operation into the thriving 1,000-acre Ashanti plantation with help from a 250-strong, enthusiastic labour force. In 2003, they were named the country’s growers of the year by their peers. “There was a real sense of the farm going forward and developing. It was a very fulfilling time.”

Unfortunately, they had arrived just as the country’s political situation began to unravel. Long-time president Robert Mugabe had been nearly unseated by an opposition party that had sizable support, particularly among labourers. To deprive the opposition of a large voting block in farming areas, Mugabe began what he called an exercise of land reform, encouraging takeovers of white-owned commercial operations.

“None of us realized how determined and how ruthless he was going to be to stay in power,” says Wilding-Davies. “The farmers and the workers were very violently, very illegally dispossessed of their homes.” After a period of harassment, threats and intimidation, including an incident in which his farm manager was severely beaten by a throng of armed men, the Wilding-Davies returned to Canada in 2005.

Wilding-Davies From Beans to Book

“It was really sad and devastating,” says Wilding-Davies, who through a sense of loyalty, was not only upset about what happened to friends and their own family, he was pained for his workers, many of whom had to flee the land on which their people had lived for generations.

After a year in Canada, Wilding-Davies and his wife, Amy, realized a return to Zimbabwe wasn’t imminently possible. They bought a small coffee roaster and began to brew and package premium arabica beans shipped directly from a portion of land they had managed to hold onto. This was the start of Ashanti Coffee. The company has grown from a single café in Thornbury, ON, to several small-town Ontario franchises. The coffee is also distributed to select retailers across Canada and recently, the US market. It is also sold online.

Although Wilding-Davies lost his remaining land a couple of years after returning to Canada, a partnership with one of only two farmers still growing coffee in Zimbabwe has allowed him to establish a grower-direct import structure. Unique in North America, Ashanti’s coffee goes directly from Zimbabwe to Thornbury or “from farm to cup” as the company’s slogan reads.

Not content to remain silent about the injustices taking place in his adopted African home, Wilding-Davies penned a book, published in 2014, entitled My Cattle Look Thin, weaving his experiences as a farmer with “the reality of really raw, nasty politics.” Wilding-Davies admits he would likely go back if there was a return to rule of law and a recognition of property rights. In the meantime, though, “I’m just very happy living here and growing the business on this end.”

He rarely rides now, but Wilding-Davies is still a horseman. He’s a highly sought-after clinician known for his laid-back manner and quick results. His main role now is supporting – and transporting – daughter Kate, 11, and her pony Jester to various events. That’s not to say he doesn’t get the competitive itch now and again.

“A few years ago, I was on the selection committee for the national team and got to go to events like Rolex and Bromont. I thought, ‘Oh man, I should really be on that side of things.’ It’s an amazing sport, I love it, but I gave myself a half-halt and reminded myself there’s a huge amount of disappointment and a huge amount of time and, at that level, you’re really not doing a whole lot else but that. I have other priorities now.”

Getting back on the horse for a bit of fun isn’t out of the question, though. His older daughter, Olivia, also a keen rider, plans to attend university in Canada next year. (She’s currently in Zimbabwe along with Amy, from whom Wilding-Davies is now divorced.)

He predicted, “If she’s riding, as well as my little daughter Kate, then I’d better get a horse and join them and we’ll all go to events together.”