The Manila Jockey Club bookended its 150th anniversary with a book launch of its sesquicentennial coffee-table book “The Front Runner”. The historic launch at the Manila Golf & Country Club on December 16, 2019 was attended by no less than Manila Jockey Club’s executive chairman Alfonso R. Reyno, Jr. and MJC president Alfonso Victorio G. Reyno III.
The Front Runner captures in insightful text and beautiful images MJC’s run through Philippine history from being the favored pastime sport of the social elite more than 150 years ago to being the enduring, thrill-a-second populist sport that it is today. Within its 300 pages, the book takes the reader through the history of horse racing in the Philippines, through two wars—the Philippine Revolution and World War II—and through the historic transfer of the hippodrome from San Lazaro, Manila to the modern race tracks of the newly built San Lazaro Leisure Park in Carmona, Cavite.
“No such chronicle of horse-racing history has been produced before,” pointed out Attorney Reyno III. “The book captures the essence of how horse racing was born and kept alive in the Philippines over the course of 150 years, and how MJC played a central role in all that.”
Also at the launch were members of the MJC book-project team led by MJC Director, Corporate Counsel & General Counsel, Atty. Ferdinand. A Domingo, MJC COO and VP for resource administration Attorney Peter G. Zagala, MJC VP for marketing Eduardo Ramirez de Arellano and MJC VP for MIS Carlos S. Tan.
Ramoncito Ocampo Cruz, the CEO and executive/creative director of Media Wise Communications, a many-time winner of the prestigious Anvil and Quill publication awards, said that producing The Front Runner showed how MJC “has evolved over time, and how it continues to innovate and gallop toward a rosier future through bold business strategies and strategic partnerships.”