Richard and Connie Snyder are the TOBA January Member of the Month.

Richard and Connie Snyder will likely be thrilled if 2024 continues in the same fashion as 2023. Their Cove Springs Farm sent out the husband-and-wife team’s first grade 1 winner as breeders. Randomized tallied three consecutive stakes wins—two graded—before nearly winning a Breeders’ Cup race, and Cove Springs sold two youngsters for $700,000 or more.

“We were so blessed this year with all of our horses from our yearling sales,” Richard said. “We had a great foaling, great breeding year. Of course, Randomized has been just huge for us. I guess her defeat by less than a length in the Breeders’ Cup was pretty awesome.” “By a monster of a filly,” Connie chimed in, referring to winner Idiomatic. “Randomized sure didn’t dodge her in the Breeders’ Cup, and she certainly fought a great battle.”

In 2023, Randomized reeled off wins in the Wilton Stakes, Alabama Stakes Presented by Keeneland Sales (G1), and Beldame Stakes (G2). She then ran second by a half-length in the Longines Breeders’ Cup Distaff (G1), for which the Snyders were in attendance. “It seems like when Richard and I watch races for our horses, you kind of seem to block everything else out except what’s going on the track and it’s extremely exciting for us,” Connie said.

At the 2018 Keeneland November Sale, Cove Springs purchased Randomized’s dam, French Passport, in foal to American Pharoah. The farm is still selling her offspring, including her Frosted filly, who RNA’ed for $400,000 at the 2023 Keeneland September Yearling sale. At the same sale in 2022, her Justify colt sold to Klarman for $410,000, where Klarman bought Randomized for $420,000 the previous year. Named Marginal Cost, the Justify-French Passport is now in training. French Passport has a weanling Maxfield filly. Open for 2024, she’s booked back to Uncle Mo.

Of French Passport’s foals’ success, Richard said, “It’s wonderful. That’s part of what makes all this business so exciting, to have a mare like her and be able to sell her babies for what they bring and watch them go ahead and perform. The first one went to Japan, and he didn’t get a whole lot done, but he brought a lot of money for us and helped us move our business forward, as did Randomized and her little brother.[…]”

“You know, we don’t race a whole lot,” he added. “We’re just as excited about the ones that we breed and sell that go on racing for other people. That gives us a lot of satisfaction, that you know that the horses are doing well for other people. That’s pretty important to us.” At press time, the Snyders plan to race the Frosted half-sister to Randomized. They also campaigned minor stakes winner Malpais, whom they recently reclaimed in order to retire him to their farm. Located in Versailles, Kentucky, the main portion of Cove Springs sits on 105 acres. The “annex” property, a half-mile away, contains 85 acres.

Former cattle ranchers in New Mexico, the Snyders had experience with Thoroughbreds before moving to Kentucky. In fact, they used retired Thoroughbreds as ranch horses. The pair began looking for a Bluegrass home in 2012, eventually making the move in August 2014. Now, they keep approximately 30 to 32 mares on the farm, about half of which belong to clients. Their team, including Edgar Chacon, Israel Romo, Ubaldo Gonzalez, Marvin Calles, and Horacio Pinales, is indispensable to the operation.

The year proved a top-flight one for the Snyders at the sales, too. Gainesway consigned a Cove Springs son of Not This Time to the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga August sale. The yearling fetched $725,000 from West Bloodstock, for Repole Stable & Spendthrift Farm. “The Not This Time, he was just a natural from the get-go, big, strong, pretty colt when he was a foal. And when [Gainesway general manager] Brian Graves came and looked at him the first time, he just… I think his words were [that] ‘this horse haunted him.’” The colt’s dam, Speightstastic, has a weanling Mendelssohn filly. In foal to Authentic for 2024, she’s booked back to Nyquist.

In the first book at Keeneland September, Cove Springs sold a $700,000 Justify filly. The first foal out of the Daaher mare Gaels Win, she was purchased by Douglas Scharbauer. “She’s an absolutely beautiful filly,” Richard said. “She was a late May foal and big, strong, beautiful.” Due to deliver a Tapit foal in late January 2024, Gaels Win is booked back to Flightline.