WHAT a great success our Champions of the Decade competition has been and we have had superb support from the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland and from you, our readers, with 9000 votes recorded during the competition.

We have covered a total of 37 sections of the show – not all were able to be part of it, purely because of the necessity of finishing this for our Royal Highland Show results issue (this week) – and when you see all of the champions together for each breed over the past three months, what an impressive sight it has been. It has not been an easy task for those judges either who had to place the eventual champions from a short leet of three that had been decided by our voting process.

All the champions (apart from the light horse section Cuddy qualifiers) are included in this week's issue, and reported on these pages, where we've tracked down the very many success stories that go along with winning that special Royal Highland Show title, and now the Champion of the Decade accolade.

Next week will see our 'inter-breeds' being judged for Beef, Sheep, Dairy, Heavy Horse and we'll announce the best of the Cuddy qualifiers.

The judge for the Beef inter-breed will be Kay Adam, Newhouse, Glamis; placing the Sheep, will be immediate past chairman of RHASS, Jimmy Warnock, Sandilands, Lanark; show director, Tom Tennant, Gilmanscleugh, Ettrick, will place the Heavy Horses overall; and the Dairy will be placed by last year's SAYFC top dairy judge, Struan McGregor. The light horse steward, Tom Best, will select the winner of the Cuddy RHI qualifier for next week.