August 24, 2026 
If you had two words describe Harry Charles’ World Championships week in Aachen, ‘a journey’ would be the most appropriate.
Over the course of the competition, the 27-year-old British Olympic team gold medalist has been going through it in front of the international cameras in a refreshingly honest way, later describing his time as “a rollercoaster of a week.”
On Wednesday, Charles and the 12-year-old New Zealand Warmblood LT Holst Freda had a pole down coming into the final combination of the First Competition, starting their championship in 44th place. On Thursday, a costly rider error earned the pair another four faults, sending Charles tumbling 10 places down the standings, and relegating Great Britain to fourth place overnight.
“I just had a bit of a mind blank, I guess,” Charles said of his failure to add another stride in the line on Thursday.
“It’s pretty crap for me—just all week being a bit off the pace myself. [I’m] really disappointed for Freda, because she is incredible, and I don’t know when I’m going to get another horse like her. [I] wanted to kind of do her justice this week, and I just got in the way of her.”
To be sure, Charles has plenty of good reasons to want to do right by his horse.
LT Holst Freda burst onto the international stage with her eye-catching performance in the Longines FEI Jumping World Cup Final in Fort Worth in April. There, the ever-so-game grey mare kept the rails in the cups across multiple rounds with owner/rider Julie Davey of New Zealand, who had produced Freda herself.
In June, Charles and his wife, Eve Jobs, purchased Freda from Davey, giving the British rider just 10 weeks to get to know the mare before their championship debut. Things started out swimmingly, with the new partners jumping double-clear and winning the jump-off for a victorious Great Britain at Longines League of Nations Rotterdam.
But the ever-fickle Aachen, after Day 2 of the World Championships, was proving to be a different story.
“I absolutely love this place, it just doesn’t love me back,” Charles opined on Thursday. “I’ve always kind of never had the rub of the green here.
“It’s just really hard, when you have a horse that good, you don’t get so many cycles with the horse, especially at a World Championship,” he continued, his voice filled with emotion. “So, to not deliver here, just hurts a bit, you know?”
But if the Gute Laune–blaring Aachen Gods were thirsting for a show of humility, Harry Charles must have made the appropriate offering. On Friday, he and Freda came back swinging, delivering a clear in the Team Final to help secure bronze for Great Britain.
The pair, however, were still sitting in the middle of the pack individually—a very far cry from the medal podium. Charles said it crossed his mind to cut his losses and withdraw Freda from Sunday’s competition.
“I wondered if it was the right thing to even jump. I was 23rd starting the day, and thought, Well, you never know what could happen.”
You, I, and Charles might not know, but the ever-omniscient Chat GPT certainly does. So, Charles went ahead and asked.
The response?
“Unlikely, but not impossible,” Charles said with a chuckle in the press conference on Sunday, after he decided to defy AI’s rather gloomy prediction and continue in the Individual Final. And, in the end, human intuition had the edge over the robots.
“[Freda] felt so fresh in the first course, she ate it. A few [combinations] had fences, [and it was a] massive long shot going into the second round, [but] I thought, Let her do her thing.
“I knew there wouldn’t be so many clears in the second round, it was enormous, and [Freda]—just to be honest—ate it again.”
In the end, Charles and Freda’s back-to-back zeros improved their standing by 20 places, becoming one of just three combinations on Sunday to post double-clears. The other two: World Champion Steve Guerdat (SUI), and silver medalist Thibeau Spits (BEL).
“I cannot believe the feeling I got and I cannot believe the horse I have,” a jubilant Charles said after the final round. “Never did I dream after the first couple days that an individual medal was possible.
“I thought it was something I lacked as a rider, that I hadn’t really competed properly in a championship, and I really thought I blew it [this week],” he continued, chalking his ‘unlikely, but not impossible’ turnaround to “a bit of self belief.”
That, and one other, ace-in-the-hole
“I have an incredible horse,” Charles said, “that really is what it comes down to. [Freda] got this bronze, and I was just lucky to be sat on her.”
