Everything about Harry Charles’ route to world championship bronze was unexpected.
In fact, just three months before the FEI World Championships Aachen 2026, Great Britain’s two-time equestrian Olympian was considering booking a holiday for the week of the championships.
By Sunday evening (23 August), he was standing on the individual jumping podium with a bronze medal around his neck.
At the heart of that unexpected journey was the horse who, in Charles’ words, “changed everything”: 12-year-old mare LT Holst Freda.
Her arrival came at an important moment for the 27-year-old Brit. Two years earlier, he had helped Team GB win team jumping gold at Paris 2024 aboard Romeo 88, his long-time championship partner who has since retired from the sport. Finding the horse to take him into the next chapter of his career was therefore no small task.
The mare had originally been intended for his wife, Eve Jobs (daughter of the late Steve Jobs), who had only just returned to England when she learned there was an opportunity to try the horse.
“She didn’t even leave the airport,” Charles recalled in the post-competition press conference. “She turned around, booked another flight and flew out.”
Charles and his father went to see Freda before Eve arrived and the first impression was immediate.
“When Eve turned up, I said, ‘I don’t think you even need to try this horse,’” he said. “I was anyway so in love with her.”
It was Eve who first floated the idea of Aachen. With the world championships only three months away, Charles initially dismissed the thought. His father, London 2012 Olympic team champion Peter Charles, was more optimistic.
“She said, ‘Do you think you could take this horse to the world championships?’ I said, ‘No, it is three months away. Probably not.’ And then she asked my dad the same question, and he said, ‘Absolutely.’”
His father was right.
Charles and Freda clicked almost immediately, and a double clear in Rotterdam in June offered the first real indication of what the pair might be capable of. Still, bringing such a new partnership to a world championships, at Aachen of all places, was an enormous test.
“In May, I was thinking I might as well book a holiday this week because it did not look very likely, and then Freda came along and changed everything for me,” Charles said. “She’s our dream horse, really. She’s so, so intelligent. Doesn’t really get fazed by much.”
