← ArticlesEditorialWho's at the Top of US Dressage Right Now
Published Jul 6, 20265 min read
"Top" in dressage means three different things — FEI world ranking, championship-team selection, and national-championship results — and they don't always agree. Here's who leads by each measure in 2026: Christian Simonson, the highest-ranked American of the rider-ranking era, the eight combinations short-listed for the World Championships, and the veterans still in the hunt. Plus how to read a ranking without over-reading it.
"Who's the best US dressage rider right now?" is a more slippery question than it sounds, because "top" is measured at least three different ways — and they don't always agree. A rider can be ranked highly by the FEI, left off a championship team, and beaten at a national final all in the same season, without any of those facts contradicting the others. So before the names, the measures.
Three ways to be "at the top"
Provenance
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A complete answer touches all three. Here is where each points in 2026.
By world ranking: Christian Simonson leads
The highest-ranked American in 2026 is Christian Simonson, who climbed to World No. 7 with Indian Rock by spring — the highest any US rider has stood since the FEI split its athlete and horse rankings about four years ago. Behind him, Marcus Orlob rose to the top 20 and Kevin Kohmann sat in the low 30s over the same stretch. Because the ranking updates monthly, treat those exact numbers as a spring-2026 snapshot and check fei.org for the current list — but the shape of it, with Simonson clear at the front, held across the season.
Ranking aside, Simonson has the recent results to match: a silver medal at the 2026 World Cup Final in Fort Worth on a personal-best 83.810% freestyle. By both measures — the list and the latest championship — he is the current US number one. His story is worth its own read in the young guard piece.
By selection: the World Championship short list
For team purposes, the closest thing to an official "top" is the eight-combination short list US Equestrian named for the 2026 FEI World Championships in Aachen:
A few things to notice. Simonson carries two horses on the list — a depth advantage no one else has. Kasey Perry-Glass, an Olympic team medalist, is back in championship contention on Heartbeat W.P. in their third season together. Anna Marek and Fayvel have been the most consistent domestic Grand Prix pair, anchoring the Nations Cup win with a 69.435%. And the list mixes seasoned internationals (Holzer, Perry-Glass) with riders making their first senior championship push (Davis, who had never competed outside North America; LaPlaca; Vaughn). The short list is not the final team — that gets cut to a traveling squad after the July observation Nations Cup at Hagen — but it is the federation's current read on the top of the pool.
The veterans still in the hunt
"Top" isn't only the short list. Adrienne Lyle, a two-time Olympian — and, notably, Simonson's own coach — remained active at the summer selection Nations Cups with Helix. Steffen Peters, the most decorated American of his generation, remains a reference point for the whole program. Ben Ebeling put a young combination into the World Cup Final top ten. On any given weekend, at a level this deep, the ordering shifts.
How small the top really is
The elite Grand Prix picture is a sliver of the whole sport, and our own data shows just how thin. The DPI index — a database of US national (USEF/USDF) results — holds just under 171,000 comparable scored rides. Only about 20,000 of them are at the FEI levels (Prix St. Georges through Grand Prix), and only 1,010 are Grand Prix rides scoring 70% or better. The riders above live in that top fraction of a fraction. The index also confirms their domestic depth — Adrienne Lyle carries a 72.83% median across 73 FEI-level national rides, Anna Marek 136 scored rides in all, Ben Ebeling 103 — but note carefully what this dataset is not: it is US national results, not the FEI international Grand Prix results that drive the world ranking. The "World No. 7" next to Simonson's name was earned at Fort Worth and in Europe, not here. Two different measures, honestly kept apart.
Reading a ranking without over-reading it
Two honest cautions before you quote any of this at the barn.
A ranking is horse-and-rider specific, and horses are mortal. Simonson is No. 7 with Indian Rock. Rankings, short lists, and results attach to a combination, not to a name — which is why the same rider can be world-class on one horse and mid-pack on another, and why an injury or a retirement can reshuffle the order overnight.
A snapshot is not a season, and a season is not a career. The FEI list moves every month; the short list was a moment in early summer; a national title is one weekend. Any single one of them over-read becomes wrong the moment it changes.
This is the same discipline we ask riders to apply to their own scores — read the trend, not the test, in context, against a fixed standard. It's also why DPI compares results within level and keeps each one tied to the competition it came from rather than publishing bare leaderboards; the methodology explains how, and the national index is built on it. One last calibration: everything above is the FEI Grand Prix "top." If you're an adult amateur chasing confirmed 60s at Second Level, your top is a different, equally real thing — and it's measured the same honest way, one sourced score at a time. Terms unfamiliar? The glossary has them.