Born in Enfield, Charlotte was brought up in Hertfordshire and started riding as a two-year old. By sixteen years old, Charlotte, with the devoted backing and support of her family, had won the Horse of the Year Show competition four times and was a winner at Hickstead on three occasions. After further encouragement from her trainer, Debbie Thomas, Charlotte took up dressage with a horse bought from her grandmother’s inheritance.
In February 2007, she had some lessons with Carl Hester, and after ten days at his yard covering for a staff member who was on holiday, he offered her a job as a groom at his yard in Newent, Gloucestershire, where she has since remained.
From the start, Charlotte was asked to bring on the novice Dutch Warmblood gelding Valegro, owned by Carl and Roly Luard, with the intention of that horse being ridden by Carl However, after competing in their first dressage Grand Prix event in 2011, the combination became part of the successful team, who won gold in a European Dressage Championships competition at Rotterdam and thus began their meteoric rise.
Charlotte is now the most successful British dressage rider in the history of the sport and the winner of all major titles. She also holds every world record in Dressage.
With Valegro, Charlotte held the complete set of the available individual elite dressage titles; the individual Olympic freestyle, World freestyle and Grand Prix Special, World Cup individual dressage and European freestyle, and Grand Prix Special titles. She is the first, and to date only rider to hold this complete set of titles at the same time. She has also won Olympic and European Team Dressage Championships with Great Britain.
At present, she is part of the current Great Britain team for Team Dressage and has a string of upcoming dressage horses, all competing successfully at their respective levels.
With three gold medals and one silver medal, Charlotte is also Great Britain's most successful Olympic equestrian.
At the 2018 FEI World Equestrian Games, on the then nine-year old mare Mount St John Freestyle, Charlotte won bronze medals in both Team Dressage and Individual Grand Prix Spécial.
Charlotte has multiple Grand Prix level Dressage prospects and is on the team for the Olympics in Tokyo.
Outside of equestrian, Charlotte Dujardin guest starred on the Netflix show Free Rein and her biography 'The Girl on the Dancing Horse' became a Sunday Times Bestseller.
She is currently in high demand internationally for masterclasses and continues to sell out arenas around the world.
Charlotte has also never been far away from the Honours list and was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours both for services to equestrianism. She was also voted the Sunday Times and Sky Sports Sportswoman of the Year in 2014 and BT Sport's Action Woman of the Year 2014; the first dressage rider to win these titles.
World Records
Grand Prix (87.46%, Olympia 2014)
Grand Prix Special (88.022%, Hagen CDI4* 2012)
Grand Prix Freestyle (94.3%, Olympia CDI-W 2014)
Holds the British record score for Grand Prix Freestyle with 90.650% riding Valegro (Hartpury, UK 2012). Charlotte and Valegro were part of the Gold medal winning team at the 2011 European Championships in Rotterdam on their Championship debut. Rode her first Grand Prix test in January 2011 with Valegro, with a debut score of 74%