Copyright by Stephen H. ’Steeple’ Bell
1) Pointer or Setter? On first glance one might want to answer that a pointer is more likely to win because there have been more pointer winners, right? But when you also consider that there have been three times more pointer contestants than setter contestants, the actual answer is:
# of contestants # of winners* percentage
Pointers 1184 84 7.09%
Setters 276 22 7.97%
(*the winners of more than one year were counted only one time)
This advantage for the setters becomes still more apparent when you factor the number of appearances, since many dogs run more than a single year:
# of appearances # of winners* percentage
Pointers 3022 96 3.18%
Setters 496 26 5.24%
(*the multiple wins are counted here)
2) Male or Female? Pointers and Setters combined, with the same (*) considerations as above, the answer is:
# of contestants # of winners percentage
Males 1119 79 7.06%
Females 341 27 7.92%
# of appearances # of winners percentage
Males 2749 89 3.24%
Females 769 33 4.29%
To combine questions 1 and 2, we get the following stats:
For the number of contestants:
Breed/sex # of contestants # of winners percentage
Pointer male 899 61 6.79%
Pointer female 285 23 8.07%
Setter male 220 18 8.18%
Setter female 56 4 7.14%
Totals 1460 106 7.26%
For the number of appearances:
Breed/sex # of appearances # of winners percentage
Pointer male 2348 68 2.90%
Pointer female 674 28 4.15%
Setter male 401 21 5.24%
Setter female 95 5 5.26%
Totals 3518 122 3.47%
3) Rookie or veteran? There have been 33 rookie year winners and 106 individual winners (not counting multiples, which would always be a veteran year even if the dog had been a rookie winner), so at first glance that is the winners are rookies only 31% of the time. To break this down by appearances:
# of appearances # of winners percentage
Rookie 1460 33 2.26%
Veteran 2058 89 4.32%
Here is a list of the dogs who won in their rookie year:
Year Dog's Name Breed/sex
1896 Count Gladstone IV Setter/Male
1899 Joe Cumming Setter/Male
1900 Lady's Count Gladstone Setter/Male
1907 Prince Whitestone Setter/Male
1908 Count Whitestone II Setter/Male
1909 Manitoba Rap Pointer/Male
1910 Monora Setter/Female
1911 Eugene M Setter/Male
1912 Commissioner Setter/Male
1917 Mary Montrose Pointer/Female
1921 Ferris Jake Pointer/Male
1922 Becky Broom Hill Pointer/Female
1933 Rapid Transit Pointer/Male
1939 Sport's Peerless Pride Setter/Male
1941 Ariel Pointer/Male
1946 Mississippi Zev Setter/Male
1948 Peter Rinski Pointer/Male
1958 The Arkansas Ranger Pointer/Male
1971 Wrapup Pointer/Female
1975 Volcanic Express Pointer/Female
1976 Miller's White Cloud Pointer/Male
1977 Allure Pointer/Female
1982 Heritage's Premonition Pointer/Male
1983 El Sauz Doll Pointer/Female
1985 Flatwood Hank Pointer/Male
1988 Navajo Dude Pointer/Male
1999 Whippoorwill Wild Card Pointer/Male
2001 Law's High Noon Pointer/Male
2003 Texas Trailrider Pointer/Male
2006 Shell Creek Coin Pointer/Male
2011 Touch's Whiteout Pointer/Male
2016 Whippoorwill Justified Pointer/Male
2017 Lester's Sunny Hill Jo Pointer/Male
