May 26, 2025 
Fairy godmothers don’t always wear pointy hats and arrive by pumpkin coach. Sometimes, they keep their wands under wraps.
At least, that’s the case for British rider Charlie Jones’ unofficial fairy godmother, Karrie Rufer. On Sunday, May 25, Jones, 26, earned the biggest win of his career on Rufer’s horse, Capitale 6, during the CSI4* 1.55m Grand Prix on the final day of the Canadian Premier at Thunderbird Show Park.
In doing so, he bested a jump-off field of six—among them Tbird’s winningest rider, Conor Swail (IRL)—and a beaming Jones didn’t hold back his emotions after his win.
“It’s kind of a fairy tale, really,” Jones said of “Pete”, the 14-year-old Holsteiner gelding who joined Rufer’s Morning Star Sporthorses in early 2020. A few years later, a series of health circumstances—both horse and human—brought Pete, Karrie, and Charlie together.
According to Rufer, the gelding required surgery for calcifications in his poll area and was stepping back up the ranks at Tbird in September of 2023. “[Pete] was kind of coming back slowly, but I was ready to start moving up with him again, and for some reason, I came up here [to Langley] and my eyesight [was bothering me]—I couldn’t see a distance,” Rufer explains.
“I had to give a lot of my horses away, and Charlie had ridden [Capitale 6] before. So, I was like, ‘Charlie, do you want to ride this one?’”
Jones readily agreed, and according to Rufer, the chemistry between him and Pete was evident right from the start. By the end of their first month together at Tbird, they took second place in a CSI3* 1.50m class. In the weeks to come, they earned multiple top-10 finishes at both Langley and at Spruce Meadows.
“I was like, ‘Please, let me buy this horse—I loved him,’” Jones recalls. “But then [Karrie] was just amazing, and just came back to me and said, ‘You know what? You don’t have to buy him. Let’s just carry on.’”
Carry on, they did, earning an 11th place finish in the CSI4*-W Longines FEI World Cup Sacramento in October of 2023, and podium finishes in the CSIO4* Grand Prix in Wellington and the 1.55m CSI5*-W World Cup qualifier in Ocala this winter.
In March, Pete helped Jones make his senior, 4* Nations Cup debut in Wellington, later putting in a solid performance for the British in the CSIO5* Longines League of Nations Ocala.
“I like the idea of [allowing a horse] to achieve the most they can possibly achieve,” says Rufer of her decision to essentially give Jones a top-level grand prix horse.
“I said, ‘Listen, [Pete] just had a surgery, I don’t know if it’s going to last. You’re young—I don’t want you to risk it on a horse that I don’t know [will hold up]. Why don’t you just take him, and we’ll figure out an arrangement?’
“Charlie’s one of the nicest, hardest-working people I’ve met. He’s always in a good mood. He’s doing the right thing for the horse,” Rufer continues.
“When you find somebody and they have chemistry with one of [your horses] that you don’t have chemistry on, it’s like, you know what? Let’s do what’s right for the horse. And they love each other.”
In fact, Jones says, he loved Pete from the moment they jumped their first jumps together. “I liked him, always, but I think when I started to jump [him] big for the first time, I was like, Wow, this horse has so much go.
“Like, today in the warmup, I could barely touch him with my legs,” Jones says. “I [know] whatever happens, we’re going to be fast.”
Jones, who will give his horses some time off before heading to Spruce Meadows for the rest of the summer series, says he is grateful to Rufer and the Morningstar team for changing his life. “[Karrie] has been so understanding and generous to say ‘Keep riding him,’ and that’s what’s great about her.
“She’s so optimistic and so encouraging that she’s a pleasure to ride for.”
And the British rider is equally grateful for the princely gelding who’s helping to make his wildest dreams come true. “[Pete] is like a dog—he literally is like a pet,” Jones says of the horse Rufer calls, ‘Perfect Pete.’ “He’ll do anything you want.
“I think his best thing is his character. He might not be the flashiest horse in the world with the biggest load of scope, but he will give you everything.”
