← ArticlesNewsThe State of the US Dressage Team: From a Paris Low to the Road to Aachen
Published Jul 6, 20265 min read
Two summers, two very different pictures. In 2024 the US dressage team was knocked out of the Paris Olympics before it could complete a round; in 2026 it won the Wellington Nations Cup for the first time since 2020, took World Cup Final silver on home soil in Fort Worth, and short-listed eight combinations for the FEI World Championships in Aachen. A look at where the program actually stands — and how to read a team on the way up.
Two summers tell two very different stories about US dressage.
In the summer of 2024, at the Paris Olympics, the American team was knocked out before it could finish. In the summer of 2026, that same program — same chef d'equipe, several of the same names, a wave of new ones — is heading to the FEI World Championships in Aachen off the back of its best domestic season in years. Neither summer is the whole truth. Read together, they are a case study in how a national program actually moves: not in a straight line, and not off any single result.
The low: Paris 2024
The US went to Paris with a credible team — on Helix, on the veteran Suppenkasper, and on Jane, with and Bohemian as traveling reserve, all under chef d'equipe . It came apart in the worst possible way.
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Orlob's mare Jane knocked herself just before entering the arena, opening a small nick on a hind fetlock that bled during the test. Under the FEI's blood rule, fresh blood during a test is an automatic elimination — no appeal, no discretion. With one score voided, the team could not be completed, and the US was out of the team competition before the Grand Prix Special. Lyle (72.593%) and Peters (a subdued 66.491%) rode on as individuals; neither reached the individual freestyle final. For the mechanics of why blood ends a ride regardless of the quality of the work — and how the FEI has since tightened that rule for 2026 — see our review of what changed in dressage for 2026.
It was a genuinely bad day, and the temptation after a day like that is to declare a program in crisis. That would have been the wrong read.
The turn: 2026
Eighteen months later, the same program produced the opposite kind of season.
Wellington Nations Cup, March. The US won the CDIO Wellington Nations Cup — its first victory in that leg since 2020 — on the strength of Anna Marek and Fayvel (69.435%), Meagan Davis and Toronto Lightfoot (68.544%), Ashley Holzer and Hawtins San Floriana (67.652%), and Jordan LaPlaca and Gold Play (65.131%), for a team total of 205.631. A five-year drought on home turf, ended.
World Cup Final, April — in Texas. For the first time in years the sport's indoor world final came to the United States, at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth. The headline belonged to 23-year-old Christian Simonson, who rode Indian Rock to a personal-best 83.810% freestyle and finished second overall — a silver medal at a world final, behind Britain's Becky Moody and Jagerbomb. Ben Ebeling and the mare Bellena finished tenth. An American on the podium of a global championship is not a small thing after Paris.
A national championship, restored. In May the USEF Dressage Grand Prix National Championship ran as a stand-alone event for the first time in nine years, at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala — seventeen combinations, with Simonson and Indian Rock leading the Grand Prix. Giving the domestic Grand Prix title its own stage again is the quieter, structural half of the same story.
The road to Aachen
The target now is Aachen, Germany, August 11–23, 2026 — the FEI World Championships, dressage's global title event, held every four years and last contested at Herning in 2022. US Equestrian has named an eight-combination short list for The Dutta Corp. U.S. Dressage Team:
| Rider | Horse |
|---|
| Meagan Davis | Toronto Lightfoot |
| Ashley Holzer | Hawtins San Floriana |
| Jordan LaPlaca | Gold Play |
| Anna Marek | Fayvel |
| Kasey Perry-Glass | Heartbeat W.P. |
| Christian Simonson | Fleau de Baian |
| Christian Simonson | Indian Rock |
| Geñay Vaughn | Gino |
The short list is not the team. Per Traurig, it was built from the federation's published selection criteria and a ranking list, with the national championship serving as an observation event; the final traveling squad is decided after a last European observation Nations Cup at Hagen in July before a team is named and taken into a training camp. Traurig leads a pathway structure — assistant coaches Olivia LaGoy-Weltz and Guenter Seidel, with George Williams as High Performance Pathway Advisor and youth coach — that is visibly feeding riders up from the youth ranks into this list.
For all that Aachen will be decided on international Grand Prix, every combination on that short list is already a fixture of the US national record. In the DPI index — our database of USEF/USDF national results — Anna Marek has 136 scored rides, Ashley Holzer 118, Christian Simonson 92, Kasey Perry-Glass 51; Marcus Orlob, just off the list, another 42. Their FEI results — the World Cup silver, the Nations Cup rounds, whatever happens at Worlds — sit outside this national dataset; what the index shows is the domestic body of work underneath the headline, the seasons of shows that put a rider in position to be short-listed at all.
How to read a team on the way up
The honest analytical point is the one this publication keeps making about individual scores, applied to a whole program: one result is not a trend. Paris 2024 was a genuine low, but it turned on a freak cut and a rule that admits no discretion — not on a collapse of depth. 2026's results are the more informative signal, because there are several of them, spread across different competitions and different combinations: a Nations Cup win, a World Cup silver, a revived national championship, and a short list deep enough to carry two horses for one rider.
The caution runs the other way too. A strong domestic season and a World Cup silver do not guarantee a medal at Aachen, where the German, British, and Danish combinations set a standard the US has not beaten at a championship in a long time. A short list is a snapshot in early summer; the team that rides down centerline in August is what counts, and Worlds is the test that will actually grade this rebuild.
That is exactly why a results database treats context as part of the result. A percentage, a placing, a ranking — each means what the competition, the level, and the moment it was earned in allow it to mean. DPI records results with that context attached rather than as bare numbers: the methodology documents where each one comes from, rider pages show scores against their source competitions, and the national index compares within level rather than flattening across eras. Read the US team the same way you should read your own record — by the trajectory, not the single Saturday. Right now, the trajectory is pointing up. Aachen will tell us how far. For the individuals driving it, see who's at the top of US dressage right now and the young guard behind them.