MANILA, Philippines — The country’s premier horse racing club, the Manila Jockey Club, Inc., will host the 11th edition of the Mayor Ramon D. Bagatsing Memorial Cup Racing Festival today and tomorrow at the San Lazaro Leisure Park in Carmona, Cavite.
The festival is held in honor of former Manila Mayor Ramon D. Bagatsing Sr., who established an organization whose primary mission is to care for the sick, help the poor and the less privileged in the city. Proceeds of the racing event will help fund the KABAKA Foundation Inc.
The Bagatsing family continues the legacy of selfless service to Manilenyos started by their patriarch having helped over 50,000 residents of the capital. The late mayor’s sons established the event in 2009. As longtime horse owners and breeders themselves, former Manila congressmen Amado Bagatsing and Ramon Bagatsing Jr. are making sure the annual racing spectacle lives on.
Of the 16 stakes races, two will be celebrated as major headliners. The first of the high stakes race, the Resorts World Manila Challenge of Champions, will feature local and imported horses four-year-olds and above at a distance of 1,750 meters in what is now shaping up to be a Repeat-Revenge-Redemption Race. Among the notable horses running for the Challenge of Champions will be Hitting Spree, who is the defending Challenge of Champions winner; and an upstart imported entry called Viva Morena, who recently defeated Hitting Spree. Rounding out the list of entries are Certain to Win, Und Kantar, and Pangalusian Island.
The Mayor Ramon D. Bagatsing Sr. 3 YO Open Classics remains the primary racing event, pitting local and imported three-year-olds. Boss Emong, the winner of the second leg of this year’s Triple Crown Series and The Accountant, which won the third leg of the Hopeful Stakes Race, will be joined by My Dad Bogart, Early Bird, and Phenomenal, with only one imported entry Will to Win in the starting gate.
The Resorts World Manila Challenge of Champions and the Mayor Ramon D. Bagatsing Sr. 3 YO Open Classics offer a total of P1.9 million in cash prizes. P1 million (distributed) and P900,000 will be awarded, respectively.
The Bagatsing Cup and the Mayor Ramon Bagatsing Racing Festival remain as the highest grossing racing festival for the past six years, including the record-breaking sales of P43,281,228 from the 2014 edition.
Major sponsors are Resorts World Manila, Philippine Racing Commission, Manila Jockey Club, Inc., Manila Cockers Club Inc., Solaire Resort & Casino and Fundador. Racing event partners include City of Dreams, Winford Hotel and Casino, Mr. Eddie Gonzales’s EEG Development Corp., and F.R. Sevilla Industrial and Development Corp. and San Jose Builders Inc.