Dressage Olympian Laura Graves Building Her Next Chapter At Home In Wellington

By Mike May

Veteran dressage rider Laura Graves, who has been traveling here for competition since 2009, recently decided to make Wellington her full-time home.

“Wellington is unlike any other place,” said Graves, who is busy this season training up her newest dressage mounts.

Highlighted by medal-winning performances at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio and the 2018 World Equestrian Games in Tryon, Graves continues to compete as a top-level dressage rider traveling the world circuit.

While today, Wellington is her home base, for Graves, it all started in her native New England.

“I grew up near Waitsfield, Vermont, with two sisters,” said Graves, now 38. “My family had friends who owned horses. While in elementary school, my dad, who was in the hardware business, was able to swap a used washer and dryer for two ponies. One was an Appaloosa, and the other one was a Welsh Cob pony. We also had access to a free barn, which my father carefully dismantled piece by piece. He labeled each piece, and then rebuilt the barn on our property. That’s where the two ponies lived. That barn remains standing to this day.”

Taking care of those two ponies was a hobby for Graves and her two sisters. As a result of getting them, the three girls had to pitch in to take care of them.

“We fed them, mucked the stalls, groomed them and provided water for them to drink,” Graves recalled.

It didn’t take long for her interest in riding horses to become “a serious hobby.” Graves’ passion for taking care of and riding horses ended up being more serious than it was for her sisters.

The next equestrian purchase by Graves’ parents was a horse that she rode and looked after for many years.

“We bought a four-year-old Quarter Horse from Canada. His name was Sunny,” Graves explained. “I first rode Sunny while competing in eventing, and later in dressage.”

Graves soon decided that she preferred competing in dressage, and Sonny was her first dressage partner. The first big dressage event that the pair won took place when Graves was in middle school.

“I had a high finish in the New England Junior Young Rider Dressage Championship, when it was held in Connecticut,” she said.

Graves was recognized by the judges for her high level of horsemanship. For her impressive performance, she received a number of prizes, one of which was a new saddle. She was thrilled to do so well and enjoyed the benefits of her high finish. It was the beginning of a very promising career in dressage. And, looking back, Graves gives much of the credit to Sunny, who lived until his mid-20s and died in 2021.

When Graves was in high school, a new, young horse entered her life. It was a foal from The Netherlands who was born in the fall of 2002. The horse was a Dutch Warmblood, and his name was Verdades.

“We had a small, limited budget to buy a horse. Verdades was what we were able to afford,” Graves said. “We bought this fancy horse, and I was ready to live the dream.”

While Verdades was a major upgrade from Sunny, he provided Graves with many restless days and nights, and a few nightmares along the way.

“Verdades was a talented, but a very difficult horse. But I believed in him and all his electric energy,” Graves said. “Riding him was the easy part. It was like wearing a glove. It was unfairly easy.”

But that was the case only for Graves. She quickly realized that she was really the only person that Verdades would respond to on a daily basis. Outside the training and competitive arenas, Verdades was non-compliant with other people, and only Graves could connect with him.

Graves’ frustration with Verdades was so high that she twice sent him to a horse trainer. In both instances, she received phone calls where she was told to come pick up Verdades because he was so uncooperative and impossible to work with for the trainers.

“He forced patience on you. He was a very sensitive creature,” Graves said. “Everything was difficult with Verdades, whether it was grooming him, clipping him, washing him and getting him inside the horse trailer. I eventually broke him by trail riding him.”

While competing, Verdades and Graves formed a formidable partnership.

“I was the only one who could ride him,” Graves said. “In the end, he picked me.”

Even though Verdades had a unique spirit, Graves understood, tolerated, respected and loved Verdades. And the two were very successful inside the dressage arena.

“That horse took me all over the world,” Graves recalled. “I have traveled many miles in a horse van. Over the years, I have competed at many places in the U.S., and all over Europe. I have also been invited to compete in Dubai and Australia.”

The list of global dressage events that Graves and Verdades competed in is impressive. This dynamic duo had a dominant stretch from 2014 to 2019. During those six years, Graves was the best rider on the U.S. dressage team, and at one point was the world’s top-ranked dressage rider.

At the World Equestrian Games in 2014, held in Normandy, France, Graves took fifth in the freestyle. That same year, she was an American reserve Grand Prix champion. In 2015, Graves and Verdades were fourth at the World Cup Finals. Also, in 2015, Graves competed in the Pan American Games for the United States, where she won a team gold medal and an individual silver medal.

In 2016, Graves and Verdades traveled to Brazil to represent Team USA in the Rio Olympics, where they won a team bronze medal. The highlights of 2017 for Graves and Verdades were their second-place finish at the World Cup and winning the Grand Prix Special at the COD in Aachen, Germany.

At the World Equestrian Games in 2018 in Tryon, North Carolina, Graves and Verdades were part of the U.S. dressage team and took home two silver medals.

Finally, in 2019, Graves and Verdades recorded a second-place finish in the World Cup Finals.

At the end of 2019, Graves and Verdades concluded their competitive partnership. He lived out the rest of his life in Wellington and died just recently, in December 2025.

For Graves, she remains committed to returning to the spotlight as a world-class dressage rider, but it will be with a new horse. Two of her new horses are Sole Mio, a Rhinelander stallion, and Java Dulce, a Dutch Warmblood. She is focused on earning a spot on the U.S. squad that will compete in the World Equestrian Games this summer in Germany. She also has her eye on earning another competitive trip to the Olympic Games, specifically Los Angeles in 2028.

Right now, in addition to enjoying all that Wellington has to offer, she has never been as busy as she is now. Her days are filled with training, competing and teaching dressage, exercising her six horses, and overseeing an online dressage educational platform — called Performance Riders — via Zoom.

“I am busy seven days a week,” Graves said.

To keep up with dressage star Laura Graves, you can follow her on Instagram @lauragravesdressage.