Great Britain’s Harry Charles, Riding Aralyn Blue, Masterly won the Grand Prix of the CSI 5*

CSI 5* : Harry Charles “the only one”

The sound of the God Save the Queen was heard in honour of the 22-year-old Harry Charles following the CSI 5*  big class of the day (a 1.50m with a jump-off). However, the son of Peter Charles (a member of Great Britain’s 2012 gold medal winning Olympic team), didn’t even need to jump-off to achieve this fantastic win. Out of the 24 starters, this rider, who recently represented his country at the Tokyo Olympic Games (with Romeo 88), found answers to all the questions posed by the course designed by Spain’s Javier Trenor Paz. With Aralyne Blue, a 10 year old mare, he was also the fastest rider of the day at the end the first, and therefore only, round.  “It’s always nice to win a Grand Prix by being the only rider to jump clear and not having to jump-off,” he said. “This is Aralyn’s first 5* competition, she’s 10 years old but we’re taking our time with her. She’s is probably one of my best mares at the moment, she jumps incredibly well and is very fast. I couldn’t be happier today following this win. I really think she has a great future in the sport. She’ll now have a long rest and then we’ll start again next year with the World Championships in Herning (Denmark) as our goal” The course gave the other riders a hard time, as predicted by Gregory Cottard after he’d walked it : “It’s relatively big,  technical and tricky. He’s played a lot with the angles and turns so it’s quite difficult. On top of that, there are a lot options of strides to choose from, especially in the sequence planks – triple bar and treble,  we can do either 8 and 7 strides or 9 and 8 strides. I don’t know how many will make it through to the jump-off but there’ll be some great sport.” He probably didn’t mean to describe it quite so well!