For almost fifty-five years, the Farrell family of Australia has been singularly devoted to breeding world-class Arabian horses. Starting first with primarily Polish and Crabbet bloodlines imported from Great Britain and supported by select purchases from local breeders in New South Wales, the Mulawa programme took a monumental leap forward with the acquisition of the Pure Polish Ambition (Bask x Bint Ambara by Comet) in the mid-1970s, a high profile product of the industry-leading Lasma Arabians. For the next several decades, Mulawa turned to North America for almost all their imported bloodstock, focusing on primarily Polish-related mares and stallions through the 1980s. The first major outcross acquired was GLF Apollo (Diamond Padron x Per-Brio by Percussion), discovered as a yearling in 1991, who proved to be an ideal sire for the expanding programme, adding both hybrid vigour and more modern appeal to Mulawa brand. Building on the success of Apollo, Mulawa introduced a series of tremendously successful sires throughout the 1990s and early into the new millennium, importing TS al Malik (Hello Barich ELS x BF Tiffany Select by BF Ragyemazon), Fame Maker R (Fame VF x Inshallah El Shaklan by El Shaklan), and Magnum Forty Four (Magnum Psyche x WH Nashahna by Bey Shah) to Australia from the USA, all of whom left a profound influence on the breed in their adopted homeland.
By 2010, the success of the Mulawa programme began to be built around a homebred roster of chief sires, beginning first with the now legendary stallions Klass (TS Al Malik x Karmaa by Kaborr) and Allegiance MI (Magnum Forty Four x Audacia by Parkview Audacious), evolving naturally into the use of Klass’ best son MI Klassique (ex Mustang’s Magnum by Magnum Forty Four) and the DA Valentino (Versace x DA Love by Padrons Psyche) son Vangelis MI (ex Always an Angel by SK Shakla Khan) with great success. With the daughters of these homegrown stallions now comprising the vast majority of the Mulawa breeding herd by 2020, the time had come to look outward. While the first step involved the conscientious incorporation of several high profile international sires via frozen semen – including Emerald J (QR Marc x Emandoria by Gazal Al Shaqab), Dominic M (DaVinci FM x Rosa La Valentino by DA Valentino), Atticus ENB (El Nabila B x Om El Benedine by Sanadik El Shaklan), and Rhan al Shahania (Marwan Al Shaqab x Jwaaher Al Shahania by FA El Rasheem) – it was the discovery and successful use of the Italian-bred and American-owned Farouk Palazzotto (D Seraj x D Feddah by Shanghai EA) that sparked the serious interest by the Farrells in those bloodlines being utilised by the Dubai Stud breeding programme with resounding transformative effect on the global breeding population.
The lifting of travel restrictions post-pandemic in late 2021 made possible trips to both the UAE and to Italy, with Team Mulawa keenly focused on seeing more of the Dubai Stud horses in person, getting to know the breeders and caretakers of these world-famous horses better, and exploring all the possibilities of bringing a son of global supersire FA el Rasheem (FA El Shawan x Virtuosa MLR by Versace), or his World Champion son D Seraj (ex Ladi Veronika by Versace), to Australia. Dubai Stud, in turn, proved very interested in the Mulawa breeding programme, eager to expand the genetic variation in their own broodmare band with bloodlines that had not already oversaturated the breeding population worldwide. As a result, Dubai Stud secured the lease of three Mulawa mares, including two daughters of Allegiance MI – Vienna MI (ex Valentine MI by DA Valentino) and Aspire MI (ex MI Aspiring Valentino by DA Valentino) – as well as his maternal sister Euforia MI (by Emerald J), all of whom now reside at Capecci Arabian Training in Montone, Italy.
While the genetic exchange with Dubai Stud was well underway maternally, the Farrells were still keen to identify and secure a stallion descending directly from Fa el Rasheem to bring to Australia for their own programme. With the acquisition of colts and stallions outside of the annual Dubai Stud production sale unavailable, Paolo Capecci and Susy Gurschler kindly offered a homebred yearling colt who was beginning to show promise, after having arrived rather late in the season in 2022, on 11 July. While not a son of D Seraj as the Farrells had hoped, the aspiring colt was a direct son of Fa el Rasheem, and to their delight, the three-quarter brother of the D Seraj son they had already decided to use in the programme via frozen semen: Farouk Palazzotto. A presentation was organised of both the colt and his dam D Feddah (Shanghai EA x D Jowan by Marwan al Shaqab), who Paolo and Susy had purchased from Dubai Stud as a yearling, on the very next visit to Italy. The colt proved to be not only everything Paolo and Susy had promised, and more, but so did his delightful dam, who exhibited the perfect combination of exotic beauty, feminine elegance, effusive charisma, harmonious design, exceptional tail carriage and imposing athleticism, esteemed qualities she seemed to pass with great consistency to her progeny. Her most recent son, Fawaz del Palazzotto, although still very much a work in progress at his then young age, was exactly the kind of colt the Farrells had been seeking: tall, correct, superbly balanced and well proportioned, with the classic Versace tail carriage, an abundance of natural athleticism, and, most essentially, the trademark El Rasheem refinement, quality, and exquisitely designed-head. While still too young to export, Paolo and Susy, thrilled with Mulawa’s enthusiastic approval, agreed to a tentative two-year lease beginning in the spring of the young colt’s three-year-old year.
Prior to export, Fawaz del Palazzotto made his show-ring debut at the Travagliato International C Show in early May, travelling five hours north to the Travagliato Cavalli horse fair in the Brescia province on his very first trip off the farm. To everyone’s delight, Fawaz handled this change of routine like a seasoned pro, showcasing his intelligence, curiosity and tireless enthusiasm in a brilliant performance that earned him the highest score of the show and the title of Gold Junior Male Champion. Immensely pleased with Fawaz’s composure and focus both in and out of the show-ring, Paolo remembers the experience as “a thrill”, made all the more rewarding by the fact that Fawaz represented their own breeding programme, Il Palazzotto, and that this special occasion was the first time in several years that Paolo and Susy were able to showcase a horse of their own. The energy and excitement of Fawaz’s decisive win extended beyond Team Capecci, generating serious interest from local breeders and owners as well as from those overseas who had seen the colt show via live stream. No one was more pleased, however, than the Farrells and Team Mulawa, who had bet the future of their world-renowned programme on a promising, yet underdeveloped and unproven, yearling colt more than a year earlier. The maturing stallion that would soon be on his way to Australia for two seasons was now much more reminiscent of his immortal sire Fa el Rasheem at the same age, reaffirming not only the ultimate goal of the ambitious five-year global search undertaken by the Farrells, but also confirming Fawaz’s credibility as the very first direct progeny of the living legend to arrive, and stand at stud, Down Under.
Arriving mid-July in 2025, Fawaz was released from quarantine at the very beginning of August, just one month prior to the start of the Australian breeding season, which commences annually on 1 September in the Antipodean spring. With a very busy breeding season ahead, Fawaz settled into daily life at Mulawa with remarkable ease and optimism, marked by an inherent self-confidence that belied his young age, having only just turned three years old a few weeks earlier. It was as if Fawaz had always lived at Mulawa – no fuss, no worry, no stress and no bad habits, just an immensely happy, supremely contented young horse with a great attitude and even greater appetite, who thrived on attention, and loved to work hard and enjoy himself as much as he loved his daily naps. The product of an exceptional start in life, typical of the quality care received by all the horses lucky to live at Capecci Training Center, Fawaz was further advantaged by the close personal attention given to him by Monika Dobrun, his daily caretaker, who had previously spent several years an essential member of Team Mulawa in Australia before returning to Europe. Greg Farrell, commenting on Fawaz’s exceptional disposition, shared his “confidence that Fawaz would be a well-adjusted young horse with a people-oriented disposition”, knowing that Monika had been his caretaker throughout his formative years in Italy. With Fawaz in residence, the inherent joy, enthusiasm and positive energy at Mulawa has been magnified by multitudes, so profound an impact has he made on daily life for the team.
That same positivity has also been reflected in the breeding barn, in which an incredibly fertile and virile Fawaz settled more than twenty mares in his short first season at stud: twelve for Mulawa and nine for Mulawa Community members. Both Greg and Julie are “incredibly excited about the Fawaz foals due out of our very best Allegiance MI, MI Klassique, Vangelis MI, Emerald J and Kavalle MI (Gazal al Shaqab x Karess by Magnum Forty Four) daughters”, the first due in early August 2026. Sharing his expectations for the future, Greg adds further that “great length and shape of neck, three-dimensional substance and propulsive athleticism have always been identified with the Mulawa Arabian, attributes we expect to compliment perfectly with Fawaz’s length of leg, superbly balanced, compact build, excellent tail carriage and exceptionally well designed head.” Jane is optimistic that “Fawaz’s disposition, his keen intelligence, intense curiosity, enthusiastic trainability and natural affinity for people” will further enhance the “decades-old reputation of Mulawa for consistently producing good minded, highly tractable athletes capably of succeeding as both family horses and high level show horses.”
“The 2026 foaling season ahead will always be remembered as our ‘Il Palazzotto’ season,” Greg amusingly shares, “as all the foals expected, with the exception of one embryo transfer foal by Dominic M, will be sired by either Fawaz or Farouk.” With six extraordinary fillies by Farouk already added to the programme over the last two seasons, the influence of the Il Palazzotto programme, along with the inherent excellence of both Fa el Rasheem and D Feddah, is compounding with remarkable positive effect in the Mulawa breeding herd. “By the time Fawaz returns home to Italy,” Greg affirms, “we expect to have a strong foundation of Fa El Rasheem influence in the programme, upon which the next generation of excellence can be built.”
In addition to chief sire duties these past eight months, Fawaz was also busy preparing for his Southern Hemisphere show-ring debut, adapting perfectly to his daily routine of work, breeding, schooling and rest – the dream life of every teenager. Resident trainer Cameron Bonney has been “so impressed by Fawaz’s work ethic and his inability to be distracted.” Cameron was especially pleased at how well Fawaz settled in at his first show, and first trip off the farm, in late January at Willinga Park, a four-and-a-half hour, 300km drive from Mulawa to the South Coast of New South Wales. “Like every day on the farm, Fawaz stepped off the float fresh and unflustered, settling right into his stable despite all the activity around – no whinnying, no pacing – just a happy, good-minded horse whose daily routine of food and naps continued like clockwork.”
The team was similarly amazed at Fawaz’s calm, cool collectedness at the Australian National Championships in mid-March at the Sydney International Equestrian Centre, only a short distance from home and the site of the 2000 Olympic Games equestrian events. When a massive thunderstorm arrived late in the afternoon, not atypical for Sydney in late summer and early autumn, classes were temporarily suspended as the deluge, complete with gale force winds and coin-sized hail, pummelled the showgrounds. In the stables, the noise was deafening, with the pounding on the metal roof of the complex and drastic change in barometric pressure frightening all the horses still in residence, which had been mainly reduced to just the purebred Arabian halter horses, whose finals were scheduled for the last session of the show that evening. In the Mulawa stable row, the team were busy calming their most precious horses, with the exception of Fawaz and his stablemate Baroque MI (Dominic M x Ballet MI by MI Klassique), Team Mulawa’s headliner senior stallion and yearling colt, respectively, both of whom stood quietly composed tied to the stable wall, contentedly eating their hay as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
Cameron and Fawaz finished the 2026 season in spectacular fashion, earning the Australasian International Gold Senior Male Championship by unanimous consent at Willinga Park on 1 February, as well as Highest Scoring Male Exhibit by accumulating the highest score of the entire show from the distinguished panel of international judges. As an encore seven weeks later, Fawaz was named Australian National Champion Stallion, defeating the defending two-time champion for this prestigious honour, a recognition made all the more significant when one considers that Fawaz was still four months shy of his fourth birthday. “It was very rewarding to see Fawaz acknowledged so successfully on both his Australian show-ring appearances,” Jane affectionately reveals, “and indeed how widely and enthusiastically he has been welcomed by the Australian Arabian community.” Greg adds approvingly that “we are proud that Fawaz will return home in 2027 with an undefeated show record, with the two most prestigious titles on the continent earned in one single successful season. We are confident that a very bright future, as both a show horse and as a sire, awaits Fawaz once he returns to Europe next June.”
Prior to his return, however, Fawaz has a very busy breeding season ahead, beginning this winter with the collection of frozen semen. As Fawaz proved to be incredibly fertile this past season, his outside book has been expanded to allow more opportunity for outside breeders, while Mulawa hopes to settle as many as fifteen mares in foal for his final year at stud in Australia. “No matter what has been asked of Fawaz, he always continues to deliver,” Greg discloses proudly, “as both a breeding stallion and as a show horse. The fact that he is such an enjoyable horse to have around is the real bonus for the programme.”
“We all feel so incredibly privileged to have Fawaz with us in Australia, and for him to have become such an integral and important part of the ongoing Mulawa story in such a short time,” admits Jane candidly. “After so many years of relying on genetics from North America, it is refreshing to look back to Europe for the next infusion of something special, reconnecting the programme with the initial Mulawa imports from the early 1970s.”
“As Fawaz is the very first breeding stallion ever directly imported from Europe for use at Mulawa,” expounds Greg further, “we hope that his Mulawa-bred foals will help to elevate his profile and advance his career in both Europe and the Middle East once he returns home. We are immensely grateful to Paolo and Susy for entrusting Fawaz to us as he starts his show and breeding career, and to Dubai Stud for making these genetics available to the Mulawa programme through their invaluable connection with Capecci Arabian Training.”
In 2027, Mulawa will celebrate fifty-five extraordinary years of involvement with and dedication to the Arabian horse. The coincidental convergence of this milestone achievement with the immensely consequential incorporation of Fawaz del Palazzotto into the Mulawa programme can not only be rightly recognised as providential, but also, most importantly, projected as a crucial inflection point for the Farrell family as the Mulawa Arabian horse, and the Mulawa brand, both take a monumental leap forward.
