Thank You Blue

The overall career record reads 5 wins and 12 places from 35 races — roughly 1 win in every 7 — which is a solid if unspectacular tally for a horse competing mostly at Class 4 level, the bread-and-butter tier of jump racing in Britain. But the raw numbers hide a more interesting story. Thank You Blue spent time jumping fences and, by all accounts, found the experience miserable — falling twice and being pulled up on three occasions. Candlish brought the horse back to hurdles, and something clicked. Three consecutive wins followed, with jockey Sean Quinlan noting after one of those Sedgefield victories that the horse jumped cleanly and kept finding more in the closing stages. That kind of turnaround, from a horse struggling badly over fences to stringing together wins over hurdles, is exactly the sort of second chapter that makes a trainer's season.

The partnership with jockey Lewis Stones has been productive too — 4 wins from 22 races together, a win rate of around 1 in 5, which is genuinely good at this level. Add in the fact that Thank You Blue clearly thrives when conditions are wet or soft underfoot — winning 2 from 7 on heavy ground and 2 from 8 on slightly soft — and you have a horse with very specific preferences that a good trainer can target. Candlish's yard has sent out 64 winners this season, so she knows exactly how to place a horse like this.

Thank You Blue raced just one day ago and last won at Sedgefield in February 2026, five months back. The task now is to find that winning thread again. Given what this horse has shown at Sedgefield, and how well it has responded since returning to hurdles, it would be unwise to write it off entirely.