A precious few each year get to say they bred a Kentucky Derby runner. With thousands of Thoroughbreds born each year, it’s a longshot – especially for smaller programs outside of Kentucky that raise a relative handful of foals. But for Ohio-based Bruce Ryan, who bred Santa Anita Derby winner Taiba, it’s a longshot that he’s around to enjoy this spring at all. In September 2014, Ryan was leading a yearling at his farm in Morrow, Ohio, when the colt reared and came down on Ryan’s head, causing serious injury. Ryan, who does not recall the accident, endured a long hospitalization, with his skull cap replaced that December. He then underwent a long recovery process, including relearning many basic tasks. “He is a miracle man,” said his wife, Mary. “The brain is an amazing thing, and for him to come back and be himself . . . He’s a miracle man. So this is his second miracle – to have one of his breedings” become a Derby horse. Taiba, from the stellar first crop of Horse of the Year Gun Runner, is out of two-time Ohio-bred horse of the year Needmore Flattery. That Flatter mare was co-bred by Ryan and trainer Tim Hamm’s Blazing Meadows Farm. The duo also campaigned her dam, stakes-placed Kiosk, who produced two other Ohio-bred stakes winners. :: KENTUCKY DERBY 2022: Derby Watch, point standings, prep schedule, news, and more Needmore Flattery won 17 of 29 starts – including 14 Ohio-bred stakes – and earned $732,103. As a juvenile she won four stakes, two against colts, and her first Ohio horse of the year title. She earned repeat honors the following season, winning the Royal North, Tomboy, Daniel Stearns Cleveland Gold Cup, Norm Barron Queen City Oaks, Rose DeBartolo Memorial, and First Lady Stakes, and finishing third in the Best of Ohio Distaff. Among the horses she defeated that season was multi-time Ohio champion Rivers Run Deep, which Bruce Ryan recalled with particular pride. “When she ran against the boys, and she beat the boys,” he noted as a proud accomplishment. “And she did it relatively typical of her – she would lay back [a few] lengths, and somewhere around the quarter pole or three-sixteenths pole, the afterburners would come on.” In 2015, Needmore Flattery won four more stakes, including the Best of Ohio Distaff, and earned champion handicap mare honors. She was stakes-placed in her final season of racing in 2016. “It was a pleasure to have a horse like this,” Ryan said. “When I got up to receive any accolades for her, I would say to everyone in my two-minute speech, ‘I hope everybody has the opportunity to enjoy a horse like Needmore Flattery. Because it’s a rarity.’ ” Ryan bred Needmore Flattery to Uncle Mo in her first season as a broodmare. After she produced the resulting colt, Need More Mo, in March 2018, she was bred to Gun Runner, standing his first season at Three Chimneys. “I like [Gun Runner’s sire,] Candy Ride, and Candy Ride was always in my mind about a matchup with somebody like Kiosk as well as” her daughters, he said. Gun Runner “had a running style similar to Needmore’s, [and] the mare and Gun Runner are very physically similar.” Needmore Flattery delivered Taiba on April 13, 2019, at Millennium Farm in Lexington, Ky. After fulfilling requirements to be considered a Kentucky-bred, the mare and colt shipped to the Ryans’ Ohio farm. Mary Ryan – who met Bruce at the opening of a building for which his Ryan’s All-Glass of Cincinnati did the glasswork – recalled that the colt they called Gunny was smaller, so he was turned out with fillies, including the young Flatter Her Again, a full sister to his own dam. “Gunny was the smallest one in the field,” she recalled. “He was smaller than both of them. We couldn’t put him in with the other two boys we had that year – they had 50, 60 pounds on him.” The Ryans offered the colt via the Buckland Sales consignment at the 2020 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky fall yearling sale, where Randy Hartley and Dean DeRenzo purchased him for $140,000. That duo then pinhooked Taiba to the Fasig-Tipton Gulfstream sale. He lit the bid board for $1.7 million to bloodstock agent Gary Young, on behalf of Amr Zedan. Taiba dazzled by 7 1/2 lengths in his March 5 sprint debut for Bob Baffert. Zedan then wanted to step the colt up in both distance and class in the Santa Anita Derby with new trainer Tim Yakteen. He won by 2 1/4 lengths. In the process, he became the first graded stakes winner bred by Ryan, whose first taste of the business came as a hotwalker at 16 and who has bred and raised horses for three decades. “He made his maneuver just like his daddy and mommy,” he said. “They both had a turn of foot.” Ryan no longer owns Needmore Flattery. As part of a downsizing, she sold for $195,000 at the 2019 Keeneland November breeding stock sale to Yeguada Centurion, a farm owned by Leopoldo Fernández Pujals. But he still has plenty of the family. Taiba’s old paddock mate Flatter Her Again won the Southern Park Stakes on March 26 at Mahoning Valley and will eventually be a strong addition to the broodmare band. Ryan also has a young stallion in Needmore Flattery’s first foal, Need More Mo. He retired unraced and entered stud this year at Poplar Creek Horse Center near Bethel, Ohio. Meanwhile, the Ryans will watch their Gunny run for the roses. “He was lovely, a sweetheart, playful,” Bruce Ryan said. “As soon as we would walk out to the field, he would come running over to us. There was no unenjoyable moment. He was just a pleasure to be around.”