Thank You Ma'am

The first win came at Ascot on 21 December 2024 — not a bad place to announce yourself. Ascot carries a certain weight in racing, and getting off the mark there is the kind of thing that sticks. The second win followed at Doncaster on 2 March 2025, and since then it has been a run of six races without a winner's enclosure — though a second and a third in that stretch show the horse is still close to the action rather than treading water.

Most of those 23 races have come at Class 4 level, the solid middle ground of British racing where competition is consistent and margins are fine. One win from nine races at that level — roughly 1 in 9 — reflects a horse that is competitive but not dominant. Still, placing so frequently suggests it belongs in these fields even on an off day.

In the saddle for most of it has been Miss Olive Nicholls, who has partnered Thank You Ma'am in 16 of those 23 races, winning twice together at a rate of around 1 in 8. That continuity matters — horse and rider who know each other well tend to get the best out of each other in tight finishes. Both Nicholls in the saddle and Georgina Nicholls in the yard — based at Kingston Lisle in Oxfordshire — clearly know this horse well. The yard has hit eleven winners this season, so the operation is in decent form, which makes a return to winning ways more plausible than the six-race blank might suggest. With a race just yesterday and another presumably around the corner, the next chapter is very much being written.