I will be interested to learn what they say! 
So far one non-horsey friend has said Trigger; another has said Mr Ed (and he’s in England, where the program was on as it was here)
Two have said Secretariat; another said, as I did, Man o’ War.
This is interesting!
So did I. 
I thought of him too, and wondered if anyone else had.
Cool.
Fun!
I’m going to go with real-life horses rather than fictional ones.
DH said Secretariat, because one of my Ottbs had Terlingua / Secretariat in her papers.
Then, being French, and married to me, he said Galoubet .
He has been heavily influenced, over 32 years of marriage, haha!
Me? I would say Jappeloup. But then I am biaised… 
Fictional ones, I would say the Black stallion. I loved those books, as a kid. Read them all. and when I was really young, it was Poly, the Italian pony!
I just asked my SO and his immediate answer:
“Secretariat. Who else could it even be?”
I gave him specific instructions before asking that it has to be a real one, not a movie character or other fictional character.
Also for bonus points I asked who the second most famous horse is, and he immediately said “American Pharoah.” I love AP so much, he’s one of my absolute favorites, I’m so tickled that was his choice 
I love that picture!
Asked various fam yesterday: The Black Stallion, Man O’War and Twilight Sparkle (My Little Pony).
SO said Black Beauty or Seabiscuit.
My husband really surprised me thinking it over for a minute and offering Sunday Silence.
Sunday Silence is in fact one of my all time favorite race horses, but I asked him why that was his pick. He remembered ESPN did a documentary on Easy Goer vs. Sunday Silence, and I guess that stuck with him. He also remembered the hype around that Triple Crown attempt from when he was a kid.
Gosh
So far, teenagers (mostly juniors and seniors in HS) have no answer. They think it is the weirdest thing I have every asked. 
After racking her brain, one of them came up with Spirit from the Disney movie.
Being typical Gen Z’ers, their first instinct was to Google it and start rattling off names.
I admire you for asking them! Thank you.
Now you’ve got me wondering what my classmates would have said when I was your students’ age. Definitely not Secretariat – he didn’t come along 'til we were in our 20s.
A friend a few years older than me said Trigger.
My friends in England said Mr Ed, Shergar, and Black Beauty.
My interest in this started when I saw Breyer’s ad for their model of Secretariat, which says “Ask anyone to name the world’s most famous horse, and their answer will most likely be Secretariat.”
I was skeptical of that. But going by the posts here, and my friends’ responses, I concede that Breyer has a point.
So now I have another question, based on another Breyer ad, which I’ve just seen this morning.
To the best of your memory, what color is The Phantom in Misty of Chincoteague (book or movie)? In the book of the movie she was a chestnut, with flaxen mane and tail IIRC. I don’t remember what the novel itself said. According to Breyer, she is a piebald.
https://www.breyerhorses.com/search?q=misty%20phantom*
What say you?
In the book, as in real life (the book is based on a real pony, with artistic license), Misty was a palomino pinto, by a chestnut pinto stallion, out of a smokey black pinto dam (Phantom).
I saw the real Misty as a child, and she was definitely a pinto.
Final tally on the day:
Most high schoolers could not name a famous horse.
The very few answers I received:
-Spirit
-Maximus from the movie Tangled
-The horse from the Never Ending Story
-Secretariat (this kid is an old soul and said their mom loves Secretariat)
The takeaway: we need more horsey celebrities for today’s generation!
Cool.
Thank you for the description of the real Phantom.
In the movie book I think The Pied Piper was a skewbald, so, yes, chestnut pinto. It’s been so many years since I read the original book that I’d forgotten what color the real Phantom was. I knew it was semi-biographical, like so many of Marguerite Henry’s books.
Or - horse sports need to be more present in the media!
ps - if I were a history teacher a fun assignment for me to grade (haha) would be a report on several famous horses, starting with, for instance, Bucephalus.
Who is, incidentally, the most famous horse one of my horsey friends named!
what about Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron ? every kid in the early 200s thought any buckskin had to be Spirit
The one my niece’s friend tried at our barn was named Buck. The friend’s mother was rightly concerned that he might live up to his name!
…
He did.
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