LOUISVILLE, Ky. – When the colt Justify came to the Kentucky Derby in 2018, one might have mistaken the racing pages for tales of classical mythology or reports on the late-60s space program. “Apollo.” You couldn’t walk down the hall for a drink of water without hearing that name. It was 1882 when a colt named Apollo won the Kentucky Derby, and 136 years later he still was the only Derby winner who hadn’t raced as a 2-year-old. Bob Baffert trained Justify, unstarted until February of his 3-year-old season. Justify had won his debut by more than nine lengths with a 104 Beyer Speed Figure, a first-level allowance by more than six lengths, and the Santa Anita Derby by three over the talented Bolt d’Oro. Baffert got peppered with queries about “the curse of Apollo.” “Never enters my mind. One of those things that’s something extra to write about . . . I’ll take superior talent over seasoning any old day,” Baffert said before saddling Justify to a 2 1/2-length Derby win. Baffert, notably, won’t be attending the Derby this year, but a colt he used to train, Taiba, is part of the 20-horse Derby field. Taiba, trained since his first start by former Baffert assistant Tim Yakteen, also is an Apollo horse, having never raced at age 2, but he takes things a step further, coming into the Derby with only two career starts. Both were sensational. Taiba sprinted in his debut, winning off by 7 1/2 lengths thanks to a sub-24 second final quarter mile, a final fraction difficult for any horse to clock these days on the Santa Anita dirt, much less a 3-year-old first-time starter. Taiba’s Beyer Figure, 103, is co-highest among 2022 Derby hopefuls, and off only a six-furlong maiden win, Taiba jumped up and won the nine-furlong, Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby by more than two lengths. A superior talent, indeed, and has long been so. “I saw a horse who stood out at the sale like the mountains above Santa Anita,” said Gary Young. Young is racing manager for Amr Zedan’s Zedan Racing Stable and serves as Zedan’s bloodstock manager. At the Fasig-Tipton March select 2-year-old sale of 2021, Young went to $1.7 million for Zedan to acquire a son of first-crop sire Gun Runner and the Flatter mare Needmore Flattery. “I’m grateful I had a client who let me bid until we got the horse.” There’s no zingy moniker attached to Taiba’s twice-started status; too few Derby horses have only raced twice for that. Weirdly, the only Derby winner with but two previous starts came the year after Apollo, when Leonatus triumphed. In recent history, the only such starter was Disposal, 18th in 1992. :: Get Kentucky Derby Betting Strategies for exclusive wager recommendations, contender profiles, pedigree analysis, and more “It’s a little tough,” Young conceded. “But he did go from a six-furlong maiden win to the nine-furlong Santa Anita Derby and came to a wire moving like a freight train.” Horses with even three starts, say nothing of two, were rare birds for much of Derby history. In 2011, Andy Beyer in the Washington Post was writing about the Kentucky Derby chances of Dialed In, the Florida Derby winner, and Midnight Interlude, who had won the Santa Anita Derby. Both had raced only four times, one fewer than the generally accepted five-race cutoff required to “season” a Derby runner. But in the last 15 years, two horses with only three starts – Justify and Big Brown in 2008 – have won the Derby, and in 2021 alone four Derby horses had raced only three times. “This morning when the press was gathered out here, they were talking about Mo Donegal being a seasoned horse,” trainer Todd Pletcher said Saturday morning. “I said, ‘The horse has had five starts!’ That shows you the difference between now and before. More Than Ready [fourth in the 2000 Derby] had five starts before August of his 2-year-old year. Three starts is the new eight starts.” Pletcher himself has a vastly talented colt in Charge It coming into the Derby after only three races. In fact, Charge It’s last appearance, a second-place finish in the Florida Derby, provides a perfect example of what can befall a lightly raced horse who previously has performed on raw ability. Charge It narrowly lost to a far more seasoned rival while running extremely well on the lead in his career debut, a one-turn-mile Gulfstream maiden race. Second time out, he went to the front and crushed maidens. “He hit the side of the gate, didn’t get away well, then he’s getting dirt for the first time, and he didn’t like it,” Pletcher said. “He gets to the stretch and he’s all over the place, and rightfully he flattened out a little bit at the end. Now, if he’d have popped the gate and went wire to wire in the Florida Derby, it would’ve been fantastic, and now he’s a Grade 1 winner, but he wouldn’t have learned anything from that. The pros are that for the Kentucky Derby, he got that experience.” If you look at the recent list of lightly raced Derby runners, you’d be hard-pressed to argue more than a couple might have been competitive regardless of how many pre-Derby starts they made. Pletcher had two of them, Dunkirk in 2009 and Materiality in 2015. Dunkirk, who’d gotten a 108 Beyer finishing second in the Florida Derby, failed to handle a sloppy Churchill track on Derby Day. Materiality, a pace-pressing Florida Derby winner, broke poorly in the Derby and never got close. “I don’t know why he didn’t jump well that day. Was he going to beat American Pharoah if he did? Probably not,” Pletcher said. :: Kentucky Derby Headquarters: Get the latest news, info on contenders, past performances, picks, and more  Justify and Big Brown both broke well enough to let their natural speed carry them into contention, avoiding all the trouble the Derby scrum can force a horse to overcome. Yakteen has praised Taiba’s professionalism, and watching Taiba work and race, the colt seems sensible enough. With the speed to lead a Southern California dirt sprint, Taiba will establish a forward position if he leaves the gate cleanly. “If he breaks, he’s going to be in front of 16 or 17 horses going into the first turn,” said Young. “If he breaks, that inexperience thing goes right down the shithouse. Now, if he doesn’t break, then everything goes out the window. You can see what racing experience means with a horse that’s laying eighth, but hopefully not with him.” Curlin, who would go on to be Horse of the Year twice for trainer Steve Asmussen, is the poster boy for the “seasoning required” camp. He came into the 2007 Derby off clean trips that produced a Rebel Stakes romp and an Arkansas Derby tour de force. But at Churchill, leaving from post 2, Curlin got shuffled back to 14th early in the Derby, raced in traffic most of his trip, and as he desperately sought a spot to make a move at the quarter pole, Street Sense, the eventual winner, sailed through open space along the rail. Was it inexperience that cost Curlin the Derby? “All I know is they’re not going to run it over again to answer that,” said Asmussen.