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For the past three years, Great Britain’s Harry Charles has dominated the FEI U25 rankings, sitting at the top undisturbed. During the 2024-season – which also marked his last in the U25 age group – Harry broke into the Top 10 on the Longines Rankings, as well as taking team gold at the 2024 Olympic Games alongside Ben Maher and Scott Brash. “If I should summarize 2024 in one sentence, it was a life-changing year,” the 25-year-old tells World of Showjumping as he looks back at the year that is slowly turning towards its end. “If you look at individual results, it was maybe not my strongest, but I will look back on 2024 as my greatest year yet. It has mainly to do – of course – with the Olympic Games, but outside of the ring, it was personally a great year as well.”

However, the success has not been straight-forward – there were a lot of ups and downs on the way. “We started the year off thinking my main plan was to go to the Olympics with Balou du Reventon,” Harry explains. “We worked very hard to give him the best possible chance. I only got him when he was 17, so I have had him for a very small portion of his career, but for me, I felt he was jumping in his best shape. We got quite far up the road before his owner Ann Thompson ultimately decided to retire him. It's her horse and he's done so much for the sport; I completely understood and respected her decision. It was a privilege and an honour to have been a very small part of Balou’s legacy.”

As the plan towards Paris changed, Harry’s team decided to focus on Romeo 88 and Sherlock instead. “It's a bit of a weird thing to say maybe, but there are a couple of shows I'm proud of not having jumped, even though I had the hunger and the desire,” Harry continues. “For example, we qualified for the World Cup Final and the LGCT Super Grand Prix with Sherlock – both of which I withdrew from, just feeling that he wasn't quite ready. I think that has paid me back a lot this year in terms of how much he's come on and what he has been able to do. When I look back over the year, I would have liked to have done a lot more of the Rolex-shows. However, with the Olympics being in the environment it was, I picked shows best suited in trying to replicate what we were expecting to see in Paris.”

“With Sherlock, I understood quite early that Paris was coming too quick for him; he jumped under the lights in Cannes, and even though I knew the Olympics were not under lights, being in a different environment, seeing something new, he was not quite able to process it as well as I had hoped. The Olympics is something so different and the pressure is immense, you can't practice for it. Each year, they bring out new jumps, and as experienced as the horses and riders competing there are, some weird things happen, every time. And so ultimately, Romeo was the horse that I felt was the right choice for Paris: He is the most experienced one in my stable and he is a horse who's by far had the biggest influence on my career. We really put a lot of time and effort into focusing Romeo for Paris.”

Four weeks before Paris, Harry got injured at CHIO Aachen. During Friday’s CSIO5* 1.60m RWE Prize of North Rhine-Westphalia, Harry – who had been nominated for the British team for the Olympic Games in Paris alongside Scott Brash, Ben Maher and Joe Stockdale – sustained two fractures in his wrist and arm. “In Aachen, I learned a hard lesson: You should never go under-prepared or under-horsed to Aachen – and unfortunately, I paid the price,” Harry recalls. “Bandit is a great horse, but he was a bit inexperienced for the class I asked him. We had a tumble and I ended up breaking my first ever bone – which unfortunately was four weeks before the Olympics. The timing was terrible, and the aftermath for the weeks that followed was not exactly very fun. For at least two weeks, I was not sure if I was going to be able to compete in Paris, and it was mentally tough. We had put a lot of effort in the whole project, Romeo was jumping in the form of his life and then I go and hurt myself – I felt I was letting the whole team down. Without my dad, Eve and all the people at home around me, as well as my groom Georgie looking after the horses, I would not have been able to pull through. They kept me so upbeat; they never had a doubt about me going and it really installed a lot of positivity onto me.”

“When I did realize I was able to go – which wasn't too long before the Games – it was a lot of relief more than anything else. Then my mindset quickly changed: Now I got this amazing opportunity, I've had great people around me, they've done a lot for me, stood by me and supported me. Now I needed to go and do it for the team. I didn't ride a horse for two weeks, and it really gave me a lot of time to think, instead of doing show, show, show up to the Games. I really just put all my thoughts and time into focusing on Paris.” 

“Something that really meant a lot to me this year was seeing the reaction my dad got after the Olympics, especially from the British team,” Harry shares. “He's been a huge, huge part of my career. I wouldn't have been able to do anything without him and hearing Ben and Scott speak so highly and well of him, it was really a beautiful moment for me. If there's a harder working man in the sport, I am yet to meet him. Getting to see other people appreciate him as well has been really nice. He deserves way more credit than he gets.”

“I also owe a big thank you to Ann Thompson and Stall Zet,” Harry continues. “When Ann took me on as one of her riders, it was probably a gamble, as I was relatively unknown at the time. I hope that she now feels happy with her decision. We have an Olympic gold medal together now and I'm proud to give her and Romeo that. Without both of them backing me up and giving me great horses to be competitive with, I couldn't have done any of the things I have been able to accomplish.”

“It will be hard to replicate what happened this year,” Harry says as he looks towards 2025. “I am very grateful to have fantastic horses in my stables with some new exciting additions as well. I don't mind if I slip down the rankings, I'm just going to pick a few shows I really want to perform well at. Those will be a lot of the Rolex shows, especially Aachen. I'd love to do Calgary for the first time, and I'd love to try and have a really good go at the European Championships. For the rest, I’ll just try and produce a really great team of horses and get that consistency.”

“I've spent a lot of time this year with my family, a lot more than I got to do in the previous years. My sisters Scarlett and Sienna are coming up the ranks, and my fiancé Eve as well. I will put a lot of time into helping Eve next year, and it's going to be fun to do this all together as a family. I think it is a great strength and something I'm really looking forward to in 2025.”

“I can look back on my U25 career and be very proud; I got to do two Olympic Games, two World Cup Finals, a World Championship and Europeans,” Harry concludes. “What I would tell any young rider out there, is to surround yourself with great people. Don't be afraid of learning, also from people you don't want to replicate. Take time and learn your horses and make the best of what you have. It's easy to go wishing ‘if only I had a better horse’ – there's many ifs and buts. However, if you can learn to make the best of what you have, I'm sure it will come your way eventually.”

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