Laura Graves and her horse Verdades have a strong bond of harmony and talent clear to all who watch the pair master the sport of dressage. Graves and her mother bought the horse as a foal from Holland, and she set to work to master each step of the training. In 2014, she blew the judges away at the U.S. Dressage Championships in Gladstone, N.J. She not only placed second overall, she also received one of the highest scores of any American rider and qualified for the 2014 World Equestrian Games. That summer, her first time in Europe to compete, the pair impressed the judges at the CHIO Aachen 5* and then at the WEG in Normandy, France. In 2015, at the FEI World Cup Finals in Las Vegas, she finished fourth. Later that year, she competed at the Pan American Games in Toronto, where she won the team gold medal and the individual silver medal. In 2016, Graves competed at her first Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. She won the bronze medal in the team competition and earned the fourth position individually. So far in 2018, she scored an 84.675 percent in CDI-World Cup Qualifier FEI Grand Prix Freestyle, in which she has her first of two qualifying scores to be invited to the FEI World Cup to be held in April in Paris.
