Shakira visited Maluma’s horse breeding farm outside Medellín last year and chose to ride a Colombian Criollo over the European breeds on offer, a moment the singer recently recounted on Jimmy Fallon’s show, more than a year after video of the visit went viral.
The outing followed the two performers’ time together on the Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran Tour. Maluma said he had assumed Shakira would want to ride one of his European horses, but she told him she had no interest in those and preferred the typical Colombian breed instead.
Video of Shakira riding a Criollo at El Relato drew millions of views on social media. Maluma said she was an excellent rider who knew how to handle Colombian horses. He added that the breed’s characteristic movement is part of its genetics and something the animals do on their own, not the result of training.
Maluma has long run a breeding programme at El Relato, where horses with names including Zeus, Megara, Poseidon and Don Corleone are stabled. A black Friesian named Hercules, acquired in 2017, became prominent enough on the singer’s social media accounts to attract attention in its own right.
In 2022, his interest in equine genetics took him to the SR4 stud farm of breeder and footballer Sergio Ramos in Seville. Though a stallion called Yucatán de Ramos was not available for purchase, Maluma returned home with Horizonte de Ramos, a Pure Spanish Breed that is now part of his collection at El Relato.