Young Talent Shines as Charlotte Jacobs & Pablo C Jump to the Top in $25,000 Lövsta Future Challenge Seven-Year-Old Final

By Jumper News on 22 22America/Sao_Paulo March 22America/Sao_Paulo 2023

Wellington, Florida, USA – March 17, 2023 – The future looked bright as the Lövsta Future Challenge welcomed the $25,000 Seven-Year-Old Young Jumper Final to the International Arena at Wellington International on Friday. The Lövsta Future Challenge, founded by Lövsta Stuteri owner Antonia Ax:son Johnson, has been running throughout the 2023 Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) season under the common vision to give young horses the best possible conditions to develop towards top international sports.

For Jacobs, young horse development is a family affair and one that the whole Jacobs family and their own North Star Sport Horses dedicates much of its efforts to.

“We plan our whole season around this for the young ones, and they make it a big deal now which is really great,” commented Jacobs, who also piloted Pablo C to a six-year-old final win at WEF in 2022. “We had eight horses showing this week and were knocking on the door all day, so to get the win in the seven-year-olds was great.”

From a nine-horse jump-off, the podium was produced from sheer girl-power as Great Britain’s Amanda Derbyshire and Israel’s Nataly Leibovitz (ISR) joined Jacobs in the winner’s circle. Derbyshire clocked in a little less than a second behind Jacobs on The Billy Stud’s Anglo European mount Billy Legend (Cevin Z x Rieseling du Monselet) in a time of 42.275 seconds.

“This was definitely a competitive field today and I knew the jump-off was going to be fast,” stated Derbyshire. “He’s still a bit green for a seven year old, but I’m incredibly pleased with how he handled everything today especially considering I’ve only shown him three times this season.”

Leibovitz’s one-and-only mount for the class Cheers N, an Oldenburg mare (Casiro 3 x Argentinus) owned by Leibovitz Holding Ltd., rounded out the top three landing a bit over a second slower than Derbyshire in 43.831 seconds.

“Cheers is amazing,” Leibovitz gushed. “She came to us about four months ago, and she is incredibly rideable for her large size. I was very proud of her today because this is the first jump-off we really tried to win and she was game. She was on it, and she seemed to be loving it.”

For Ax:son Johnson, the class was the pinnacle of successful young horse development she hopes to continue to foster.

“We started this series because we recognized a real need for a stepping stone for the young horses between the normal young horse classes and the grand prix level,” explained Ax:son Johnson, who also supports a Lövsta Future Challenge for young dressage horses at the Adequan® Global Dressage Festival in Wellington. “I think the success of our series stems a lot from our view on horses. We are passionate about them, but also believe that they have to be allowed to develop under their individual conditions. There’s something very special about giving the horses the conditions to do the best they can.”