I got a bit bored last year and decided I would go through all my photographs and upload all the pictures of Supreme Champions I had from the last 11 years worth of live shows onto Facebook.
Once done I thought it would be fun to do a bit of a data analysis on the situation.
First of all let me say that I do not have data from every single show, so this is in no way a thorough analysis, but it is quite interesting.
Secondly it is obviously skewed in some ways, specialist shows, a lack of shows with certain sections, one horse that consistently does very well etc etc. all mean that the analysis really isn't to be trusted at all.
But that doesn't mean it isn't interesting data and I thought I would share it with you guys.
The Raw Data
The spreadsheet itself has the following raw data for each Supreme Champion:
Show Name
Show Year
Finish
Colour
Breed
Mould (this isn't complete because I'm bad at identifying resins and it would take time for me to ID everything, so this isn't in the actual analysis)
Type (perf/in hand)
Brand
Performance Type (where applicable)
There are 147 champions recorded from shows as far back as 2008, so that's about 10 years worth.
Finish
As you can see from the above graph the most popular finish was Artist Resin a total of 68 Supreme Champions were Artist Resin (around 46%). The least popular finish was Commercial China with just 1 Supreme Champion (around 1%) being a Commercial China model.
Colour
I was surprised with colour how little variation there was to some extent. The top three colours have very little between them really. The most popular colour was grey (31), the second pinto (27) and the third bay (24). Interestingly I chose to split out different types of spotted pattern, however, even if we combined both blanket and leopard it would still only make up 17 in total.
The least popular colours that actually gave rise to supremes were rabicano, silver dapple and dun. Although it is worth noting that some colours simply don't feature. There have, for example, not been a single double dilute champion. Equally there have been no champagnes. I also found it interesting that there had been 6 buckskin champions but just one dun (although again I split out grulla and dun, if combined there would be 3).
Breed
Unsurprisingly breed saw the largest spread of winners, there is really very little in it.
With 9 horses Appaloosa was the most popular but Warmblood was shortly behind with 8. Paint and Thoroughbred both had 7 Supremes and Arabian, Mustang and Sport Horse all had 6.
It is not unsurprising that more common breeds and types would have more Surpemes because there are simply more of these horses on the show circuit. I'm not sure we can therefore take a huge amount from this. Although I do think it is interesting that the two most flashy coloured breeds (Appaloosa and Paint) are the most common champions when Grey (arguably a less flashy colour) is the most common colour to win.
Type
I would take this one with a bit of a pinch of salt. What I don't have is data as to whether these shows actually have a performance section or not. The real question is of the shows which have a performance section is an in hand or a performance entry more likely to win? I just don't have the data to answer that.
Brand
I would ignore the Artist Resin part, we already know that these are the most popular type and we also know that they don't really have brands like other models. So let's look at CM & OF models only.
It probably won't surprise you to know the most popular brand is Breyer (with 28 champions) followed by Peter Stone (with 10 champions). We then have Animal Artistry (6) and Copperfox (5).
The least popular brands that have won are Chevel, CollectA and Northlights. Interestingly despite being the brand leader in Europe Schleich do not have a single Supreme under their belt.
Performance Type
There were 28 supreme champions that are performance champions.
The most popular entries are scenes (6) followed by driving (5) and Western trail (5). There is just one champion that was a simple ridden entry (English Ridden) and one that was In Hand. This data definitely suggests that more is more! People like a lot of detail and complexity.
The Ideal Horse?
So according to this data the ideal horse would be an Artist Resin Solid Grey Appaloosa. Obviously that couldn't exist so let's take the second most popular breed and say an AR Grey Warmblood.
Although again I would take this with a pinch of salt. How much are these results skewed by a gorgeous grey TB resin that has several supremes under his belt? How do British Breed shows and other themed shows skew the results? What would have won at the shows that simply don't run Supreme Championships?
More Data?
So there are two more things that I am looking to add, the first is scale and the second is mould. I think mould will be pretty well spread with a couple of models skewing the results but I think scale would also be interesting (although again those mini scale models would help to skew this).
I hope you've enjoyed reading this and having a look at the data :) If you have any questions please feel free to email me at catriona@chestnutridge.co.uk
