Monday 30 March 2020

Supreme Champion Data - An Update

It's been two years since I've done a Blog post with updates about my Supreme Champion data collection project so I thought it would be worth sharing again.

As always I am starting with a disclaimer. There are many flaws with this data collection. Firstly it does not cover all shows, there are many I haven't been able to go to, some shows don't have supreme champions and some I simply don't have the data for. Also there are many factors that could skew the data. These include:

Specialist Shows - For example Animal Artistry Live 2019, the champion was obviously going to be an AA as only AAs were being shown.
One Exceptional Model - One really nice model can win several championships and this can alter data. For example if a good Western Trail entry does very well this will impact the data, even though it is the same entry that is attributable to all those wins.
Assumptions - Sometimes I've had to make assumptions about the breed. That's why generic breeds such as 'warmblood' may do better. If I had reliable information about each type of Warmblood then this may not be in top spot.
Classes - Not all shows have classes for all types of models. So if a show doesn't have a performance section then it can't win. Equally if a show has a workmanship and a breed section then that doubles the chances of an AR or CM winning.
Make Up of Supreme - Some shows do not allow the performance winners into the supreme, this obviously effects the number of performance entries that can win.

Numerous other factors that take too long to mention!

OK disclaimer over, let's drill down into the data!

The Data

The data is collected from 174 shows over a 12 year period, starting 2018 and ending in 2020.
All shows were held in the UK.
For each supreme champion the following is recorded:

Show Name
Year
Finish
Colour
Breed
Mould (this is incomplete and therefore not included here)
Type (In Hand or Performance)
Brand
Performance Type (where relevant)

Data is then collected and presented in pie charts. I've also included a list of the Top 5 most popular for each category, the number in brackets is the number of champions I have recorded for that item.

Brand

Brand is the make of the model. For Artist Resin/China this is simply recorded as 'Artist Resin' or 'Artist China'.

This first pie chart shows what this looks like with AR included:


This second pie chart has been edited to remove AR, because AR is more of a finish than a brand I think it is helpful to look at it without this (I forgot to remove Artist China from this one, sorry)!


The top five brands are:

Breyer (34)
Peter Stone (10)
Animal Artistry (8)
Equorum (6); RubberNedz (6)
CopperFox (5)

This excludes artist resin and china!

Breed

Below is the pie chart of breeds. As you can see there is real variety of the breeds that have won, which is lovely. Unfortunately, it's really hard to get accurate data from photos on what type of Warmblood each one is going back 12 years. So take the Warmblood with a pinch of salt!



Below are the Top 5 breeds:

Warmblood (10)
Appaloosa (9)
Mustang (8)
Paint (7); Thoroughbred (7); Arabian (7); Sport Horse (7)
Andalusian (6)

Colour

Below is the pie chart showing the colours of the models. Again lots of variety but some real clear favourites here:


The top 5 colours are:

Grey (33)
Pinto (29); Bay (29)
Chestnut (14)
Blanket Spot (13); Palomino (13)
Buckskin (7); Sabino (7)

Finish

The below data looks at the finish of the horse. This is which section it would generally show in, it is as broad as possible without being too broad.


The top 5 finishes are:

Artist Resin (82)
Custom (31)
Original Finish (20)
CTF (19)
Animal Artistry (8)

Performance Type

29 of the live shows had performance champions. From this data I have created a graph to show which performance type is most popular. Again this is quite general, but specific enough to produce good data:


The Top 5 performance types are:

Scene (6)
Driven (5); Western Trail (5)
Show Jumping (4)
Cross Country (3); Western Pleasure (3)
Costume (2)

Type

The final graph shows a comparison between in hand and performance winners. Again it is worth noting that many shows either don't have a performance section or don't let performance in the supreme, so take this final one with a pinch of salt!

The green is in hand, the yellow performance.


The Perfect Entry

So *if* we are to trust the data our perfect entry would be:

Finish: Artist Resin
Colour: Grey
Breed: Warmblood
Type: In Hand
Brand: Artist Resin

It is finally worth noting that AR Warmblood is probably one of the most competitive classes to win. I judge it. A Lot. And it is tough, it is often full of really nice entries. That said I'm pretty sure the last time I judged it I placed a Grey Warmblood as first!

I hope you found this interesting. To end, I say it at the beginning and I say it again here, there are lots of flaws with this data collection, it is just a bit of fun, so please don't shout at me for the problems with my research!

Enjoy :)