Spaniels from South East have Crufts licked

Cockers most successful at scooping Best in Show award while more top dogs come from around London

DO YOU think your dog could have a chance of winning Crufts? It might help if it is a male cocker spaniel from the South East.

Those are the characteristics that stand out in an analysis of the winners of the world’s most famous dog show. The Best in Show award was first handed out in 1928. Since then it has been won seven times by English cocker spaniels and once, in 2017, by an American cocker spaniel. Whether or not you include the American variant of the breed – Crufts does not – cocker spaniels are some way ahead of the second-most successful breeds. Standard poodles, Irish setters and Welsh terriers each have four Best in Show victories.

Readers about to administer the hairbrush to their English cocker spaniels, however, should be advised that they may be a few decades too late. Of the seven occasions on which the breed was victorious, six were before 1952. The data also show a skew towards the South East: some 24 Best in Show winners have come from the region, with an additional 11 from London.

After Greater London, the most successful county, with 10 wins, is Surrey. Ickenham, a north-west London suburb, has provided more than half – six – of the capital’s winners. Wales, alone among the nations of the United Kingdom, has provided a single winner, whereas six have come from overseas.

Male dogs have won 54 times and females 28 times. Crufts had an eightyear hiatus during and shortly after the Second World War and was called off last year because of the pandemic.

The earliest years of the Best in Show award were dominated – with the exception of Mrs Violet Mannooch’s chow chow in 1928 – by familiar breeds. A greyhound was the first winner, followed by a Scottish terrier, an English cocker spaniel and a labrador retriever.

Since then, the competition has swelled to 16,000 contenders from across the world, with 222 breeds deemed eligible. Among the past 10 winners are some less familiar breeds, including a Lhasa Apso (silky and Tibetan), a petit basset griffon Vendéen (a French scent hound with tousled fur and indefatigable capacity for tail-wagging) and a papillon (a spaniel named for its butterfly-like ears). Last year’s winner was, for the first time, a wirehaired dachshund.

Bill Lambert, a spokesman for Crufts, said: “Each year we welcome new fourlegged friends. For example, a Pyrenean smooth-faced sheepdog is competing for the first time for Best in Show 2022.”