We selected Snow (Des) Cooper as our Owner of the Month for January for his wins with both Alabama Missile and Harlem Child. As usually happens, Snow made himself available for an interview with Ray Fewings on 5RPH (audio is available on the SAROA website-here). The interview was fascinating, in part because Ray knew Snow some time ago when they were both training and driving trotting horses. Snow had quite a lot of success as a trainer/driver and after retiring, Snow started his involvement with thoroughbred ownership. Snow initially had shares in horses with Peter Jolly and with time he now has his horses spread fairly equally between Peter’s sons David and Richard. This is demonstrated to some extent by his winners for January – one trained by David and one by Richard. Snow maintains small part shares in a number of horses at any one time, with his thought being that spreading his investment over a number of horses is a better way to be involved in the industry than to concentrate on just one or two horses. In January one of Snow’s winners was Alabama Missile – which won a benchmark 90 sprint at Murray Bridge on New Year’s Day, since then she has run second twice in the city and also picked up a cheque for fifth. Alabama Missile is a seven-year-old mare by Blevic from Crimson Tide (Marju) who now has a record of 32 starts for 8 wins, 5 seconds and 6 thirds, winning nearly $194,000 which amounts to a pretty fair result. I always feel a good measure of a horse’s success is to be placed in the top three in more than 50% of its starts, Alabama Missile certainly achieves this with a top three placing percentage of almost 60%. She is trained at Goolwa by David Jolly. Snow’s other winner Harlem Child is a three-year-old trained by Richard Jolly, she is by Pluck out of Civelb (Blevic) and has now won once from 7 starts with a third as well, she has earned $36,000. When discussing his horses with Ray, Snow mentioned that he relies on his judgement to evaluate suitable horses proposed as options by his trainers. The selection process seems to work as both Alabama Missile and Harlem Child are currently the best products of their respective dams. Snow said that his best horse was Our Exchange winner of $240,000 and 7 races. Our Exchange came into Snow’s ownership as an exchange with Kambula Stud when another good mare of Snow’s, Get Set was retired. wishes Snow continued good fortune with his racing pursuits.