By Sarah Welk Baynum
Aldo and Kelley De Luca own De Luca and Sons Stable, a 30-acre farm in Williston, Fla., with a focus on breeding and raising quality Florida-bred Thoroughbreds.
Aldo De Luca, a native of the island nation Curaçao and a Dutch citizen, was drawn to the races near the island.
“When I was a young person, I started to be interested in horses—especially racehorses,” Aldo De Luca said.
Later as an adult, De Luca decided to get into the racehorse business as an owner and acquired six or seven racehorses.
“I bought a couple horses through a friend of mine who had a breeding facility in Venezuela. I bought two horses through private sale and then the rest of them we bought at auction,” De Luca said.
A private pilot at the time, De Luca would each weekend fly the quick 30 minutes from Curaçao to La Rinconada Hippodromo, the track at Caracas, Venezuela, to watch his horses train and race. However, the changing political environment in Venezuela forced De Luca to move his Thoroughbred operation to Florida.
“The situation with the government in Venezuela, which was only 40 miles away from the island, became unsafe. I didn’t want to even fly over there and look at my horses.
“I traveled to Florida in the mid-1990s and I started to buy horses at auctions like OBS,” De Luca said.
De Luca fell in love with the Ocala area for its green paddocks and it’s horse country.
“I always said one day I will have my own farm for breeding Thoroughbreds and six or seven years ago, it finally happened.”
In 2017, the Aldos purchased a 30-acre farm in Williston so they could enjoy breeding Thoroughbreds and raising foals. They also plan to retire on the farm.
“Our first mares were out of our own racehorses that we retired from the races. Then, we bought a couple of pregnant mares also at the auction. We said we would just keep it a hobby,” De Luca said.
But before they knew it, they had 10 mares and have found that while Thoroughbred breeding and racing is fun and rewarding, it hasn’t always been as easy as they expected.
One of their brookmares, Go Danica, recently had a foal that required hospitalization shortly after birth.
“All my breeder friends told me it will cost you twenty thousand dollars to keep him alive, and only maybe become a decent racehorse. But he was born with us—it’s like our kid.
“So, we took him to the equine hospital and it did end up costing me about that much money. He had an oxygen tube in his nose and the veterinary technicians had to feed him every 20 minutes for almost three weeks. We decided to name him Dan, and Dan the Man is his nickname,” De Luca said.
Today, Dan is about 10 months old, healthy and happily kicking and galloping around the pasture. They plan to keep Dan and hopefully race him when he’s of age.
Go Danica is now retired as a broodmare and being considered for another career. De Luca decided to do what they thought was best for the horse due to her foaling complications.
“She will be going to someone else to be retrained in potentially barrel racing or some other second career,” De Luca said.
Another broodmare for De Luca is Boerne, a multiple stakes-winning daughter of Fed Biz out of Seeking the Jewel, by Seeking the Gold. De Luca purchased her for $10,000 at the 2018 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Fall Yearling Sale and saw her earn $367,690 from winning nine of 26 starts with four seconds and three thirds. Among her stakes victories were the 2020 Azalea at Gulfstream Park and the 2021 Lane’s End Danny Shifflett Scholarship and 2022 Valor Farm at Lone Star Park. She had a her first foal, a colt by McKinzie, in April and was then bred to Olympiad.
“We are very excited about this colt’s future racing career.” De Luca said.
