Charlotte Jorst
Takes on the World
Dressage novice just a decade ago, the Danishborn rider is gunning for big-time success
ANOTHER STAR: With her Grand Prix mount Akeem Foldager at the
2016 Palm Beach (FL) Dressage Derby CDI-W
32 June 2016 • USDF CONNECTION
SUSANJSTICKLE.COM
BY KELLY SANCHEZ
T
he leap from later-in-life dressage rider to finishing twelfth at the FEI World Cup Dressage Final
is a bit like jumping across the Grand Canyon—
unless, that is, you’re Charlotte Jorst.
On paper, there’s little that could have prophesied the Danish-born American’s lightning-fast rise from adult-amateur rider to high-performance dressage competitor. But look beyond
her perpetually sunny disposition and you’ll see grit and determination, along with serious business savvy. Whether she’s
competing alongside the world’s leading riders, pursuing her
dream of riding in the Olympics, or developing new products
for her Kastel Denmark apparel line, Jorst doesn’t hold back.
Despite her high-flying goals, she’s also a realist. “People
look at me and say, ‘Oh she’s so lucky.’ But I’ve had my ups and
downs.” She cites the US Dressage Festival of Champions at
Gladstone in 2014, when she rode the wrong test twice and
spent the rest of the day hiding in a stall. And this season she
was eliminated after going off course twice at a CDI in Florida.
“Even when I’ve had good years, I can still go through
my tests and see a bad one,” Jorst says with a laugh. “It’s all a
learning experience. But I don’t hide in the stall any more.”
That said, Jorst, 51, has hit her share of high notes: competing at the FEI World Breeding Championships for Young
Dressage Horses in Verden, Germany; winning both the
Markel/USEF Young Horse National Six-Year-Old Championship and the Developing Prix St. Georges Reserve National Championship; helping the US squad earn a bronze
medal at the CDIO5* Rotterdam; competing at the Rolex
Central Park Horse Show in New York City. Most recently,
she impressed the largely European audience at March’s
2016 Reem Acra FEI World Cup Dressage Final (see “Backstage on the World Stage” on page 36). Not bad for someone
who took up dressage seriously only a decade ago.
JENNIFER BRYANT
Building a Stable
Thanks to the sale of the Skagen Designs watch company
that she and her husband, Henrik, built from a small Danish
brand, Jorst has been able to acquire an enviable string of topnotch dressage mounts, which include her current Grand
Prix partners, Kastel’s Nintendo and Kastel’s Akeem Foldager. Then there’s the Dutch-bred Westfalen reserve licensing
champion Vitalis, her partner in Verden. She sold the stallion
in 2015 to Paul Schockemöhle and Lone Bøegh Henriksen.
But buying the horse is only part of the equation; for Jorst,
there’s no replacement for time in the saddle. In addition to
working on her own, she’s sought out a veritable who’s who
of top trainers: Volker Brommann, Guenter Seidel, Johann
Hinnemann, and Mikala Münter Gundersen. But she feels
that riding on her own is critical.
SPRINGBOARD: The stallion Vitalis (at the US Festival of Dressage
Champions in 2014) helped put Jorst on the dressage map. She sold him
last year.
“You have to be mindful when you train with someone,”
she explains. “You dissect and take videos and then take what
you can from it. I don’t believe in taking a lesson every day,
because you can become so dependent on the lesson that you
never truly develop a feel of your own. You take a little from
everyone and keep your own identity and strengths intact.”
Each of Jorst’s horses has represented something of a
leap of faith. Nintendo, whom she purchased in 2013, posed
a unique challenge. Formerly owned by the Danish Olympian Anna Kasprzak, the powerful Dutch stallion (Negro –
Rodieni R, Monaco) had been sent to fellow Danish Olympian Andreas Helgstrand to be sold. “I wanted a horse that
could be internationally recognized, whether or not I could
ride it—and I could not ride Nintendo at all,” Jorst admits.
“But I knew if I could just learn to ride him, he would be
great. In the beginning, Guenter basically strapped me on.”
With Seidel’s help, and also working with Hinnemann
in Europe last summer, Jorst progressed. “Nintendo’s outrageously strong, and he’s very difficult to collect because
he wants to run against you. But he’s like a war horse. You
could take him out to war, and he would just keep on going.
Because of him, I can almost ride anything at this point.”
Akeem Foldager was another story. The 14-year-old
Danish gelding (Akinos – Loran, Astaire) was Helgstrand’s
ride at the 2013 European Dressage Championships. But the
following year, Helgstrand drew global outrage when photographs showed him riding the horse with a blue tongue at
an open house in Denmark.
“Very few people have been able to ride Akeem,” says
Jorst. “He’s a very large horse to get around, so it can be
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June 2016
33
very tempting to pull. There’s so much gait in there that it’s
also tempting to overextend everything. But Akeem is a
big scaredy cat. He’s very, very spooky, so for the last eight
months I’ve done nothing but ride him out in the terrain.
We’ve gone in water, we’ve gone everywhere, and now he
really trusts me. I don’t think anyone took the time to do
that. Now he’s used to everything.”
When she’s not on the road competing, Jorst keeps her
horses at home in Reno, NV, or in California. Other mounts
include Kastel’s Adventure, a 10-year-old black Dutch gelding; the 2003 black Hanoverian mare Fraktura, whom she’s
bred to Vitalis; the 10-year-old Oldenburg gelding Stanford;
and a 7-year-old Westfalen gelding named Ray Dance.
“I try so hard to make my horses happy,” Jorst says.
“Akeem loves his days when we go on a long trail ride and
then spend twenty minutes working. You can feel how content he is when he goes back to the stall.” The trick, she adds,
is helping each one live up to its promise. “I can’t be sitting
around waiting for the perfect horse. For one, I don’t think
the perfect horse exists. I make a decision and try to make it
work. Sometimes they don’t, but most of the time they do.”
Nurturing a Passion
Jorst grew up in Copenhagen, where her parents were both
successful professionals: her father a lawyer, and her mother an author. Neither they nor her older siblings, Christian
and Marie Louise, rode, and they tolerated Jorst’s growing
34 June 2016 • USDF CONNECTION
passion for horses. At first she rode ponies, but she soon
got a taste for more challenging mounts. “I think I was
twelve when I got my first completely inappropriate horse,
a Thoroughbred from the racetrack,” she remembers with
a laugh. “It was a hundred percent unridable and ended up
running away from me directly into the only parked car in
the street.”
When Jorst’s father was diagnosed with cancer, horses
became a refuge. “Between my dad trying to keep his job
going and being so sick, it engulfed my mom, so I was left
to my own devices a lot. Every day I would bike to the barn,
groom, and ride whatever I could. I was gone all afternoon
and would come home at seven or eight at night. The horses
were a lifesaver.” But when her father passed away, riding—
or at least buying horses—took a back seat.
Jorst moved to the US in 1989, two years after Henrik
arrived, and the couple made their home in New York City.
Though she’d earned her MBA in Denmark, the only job
she could get in the States was modeling and making appearances as “Miss Carlsberg,” a role that required her to
don a green sash and promote the Danish beer brand in
bars and at special events. True to form, Jorst made the best
of it. During the day, she and Henrik were busy marketing
corporate-branded watches for a small Danish company,
but their goal was to develop their own affordable, modern
timepieces. Their line of watches took off, and Skagen Denmark became an international brand. In 2012, with offices
JENNIFER BRYANT
MAJOR-LEAGUE PLAYER: Former amateur rider Charlotte Jorst (with Kastel’s Nintendo in 2014) has joined the high-performance ranks
around the world and an average of three million watches
sold daily, the couple sold the company to the global giant
Fossil for more than $200 million.
After they moved to Reno in 1996, Jorst made sure their
daughters, Christine, now 26, and Camilla, now 22, had opportunities to ride. Then Henrik gave his wife a horse as an
anniversary present—Jorst’s first horse as an adult.
“I did hunter-jumpers for seven or eight years with the
girls,” she says. “It was great, but I was horrible—I couldn’t
remember the courses, and I had no timing for it. My daughters became better and better, so they got all my good horses.”
Unwilling to give up riding altogether, Jorst turned to
dressage. “I was forty-one or forty-two,” she recalls, “and I
got myself a dressage horse, Asterios.” She and the Danish
gelding rose up through the levels to Grand Prix, winning
the Great American/USDF Region 7 Grand Prix Freestyle
championship in 2011.
In 2013, Jorst hit the international stage when she and
Vitalis competed at the FEI World Breeding Championships for Young Dressage Horses, finishing thirteenth. That
year also marked the launch of her Kastel Denmark sportswear line, which includes lightweight sun-protective shirts
that are popular with equestrians. “I’ve been expanding the
line dramatically. We’re all over Europe now,” she says.
BUSINESS SAVVY: Charlotte and Henrik Jorst’s entrepreneurial skills
built the fortune that funds her dressage career. She models a shirt from
her current venture, the sportswear manufacturer Kastel Denmark.
Amateur at Heart
Though she still sees herself as an amateur, Jorst recently
changed her USEF membership status from adult amateur
to professional. “I felt it wasn’t fair because I was winning
so many year-end awards. I’m not sponsored by anybody—
Kastel is my own company—and I don’t teach anybody.
But I’m out there competing with the best, so my ranking
should reflect that. But I miss my status terribly.”
After nearly a decade competing with the best, Jorst says
she’s no longer starstruck. “I’d read about [Dutch World
Equestrian Games gold medalist] Edward Gal, and one day
CAUDAL HEEL
Cause
Uneven loading of foot. Improper heel and
toe placement.
Effect
Narrowing of heels and frogs, improper toe
landing and lameness.
Result
Heel and toe ratio is in balance and the sole is
supported. The heels are returned to their
normal position and lameness is averted.
Vettec • Orange, California • 1.800.483.8832 • www.vettec.com
Utrecht, The Netherlands • +(31) 30 241 1823 • www.vettec.net
VA.0616.USDFCADL
COURTESY OF KASTEL DENMARK
Solution
Trim to proper heel and toe ratio. Increase
weight bearing surface of the foot by moving
heels back and support the sole with a
pour-in pad.
USDF CONNECTION
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June 2016
35
Backstage on
the World Stage
A
t the 2016 Reem Acra World Cup Dressage
Final in Gothenburg, Sweden, Charlotte Jorst
was bubbling with enthusiasm at the adventure with Kastel’s Nintendo.
“I feel that I have learned so much during this
weekend,” Jorst said during the March 24-28 event
(see page 12 for more on the competition). “It has
been a fantastic experience, and I really click with
Robert Dover; he is amazing. Guenter [Seidel] has
been a tremendous support to me. I learn so much
from them,” she said, referring to the USEF dressage chef d’équipe, who was ever-present during the
competition, and to her fellow American competitor.
Jorst and Kastel’s Nintendo thrived in the electric
atmosphere of the indoor Scandinavium Arena. They
pulled off an edgy freestyle that ended practically in
the lap of head judge Gustaf Svalling. (“I really liked
that American rider, although she came a bit too
close to me. It was truly entertaining.”) The routine
was good enough for twelfth place on a score of
73.232 percent.
“It was a blast—amazing to be in this arena,”
Jorst said afterward. “I will try my best to gain experience from competition with my two horses. I am
living my dream, and Rio [the 2016 Olympics] is on
the horizon.”
—Kim Lundin
there he was warming up with me. I was like, ‘Hi, Edward!’
No matter who you are, there’s always that competitor who
scares you, the one who makes you say, ‘She’s here—I’m going to lose!’ Steffen [Peters] was another one. I’d be terrorized with fear when I would warm up with him. Now it’s just
another horse and rider. No one can freak me out any more.”
She’d love to see more adult amateurs follow in her
footsteps. “I always tell people, ‘Ride your own horse. You
bought the horse; it’s not for your trainer. You can do it. The
hardest thing about the Grand Prix is riding your first one.
Once you’re doing it, you just solve the problems. You think,
I didn’t die from this; now I need to fix my ones and my this
and that. The fear of not being able to do it holds people
back. It’s difficult, but it’s doable. I mean, look at me!”
Jorst believes in always riding to her strengths. “A judge
once told me I should do more half-halts. When I hear that, I
will do some exercises and think about it, but that’s who I am.
I ride very forward. I have fun in the arena, and I’m not going
to take that away from myself. People think they need to train
the weaknesses, but you have to listen to the horse and train
the strengths so that he feels good about what he’s doing.”
Now that she’s on one of the biggest stages in her career,
Jorst approaches the future with characteristic optimism
and a sense of fun. “No matter where you are or who you
are, you just go in and do your best. You show them how
good you’ve become and what you can do.” ▲
Kelly Sanchez is a freelance writer who lives outside Los Angeles. She is a regular contributor to USDF Connection, The
Chronicle of the Horse, and Dwell.
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36 June 2016 • USDF CONNECTION