New race secretary appointed at Batavia Downs

Batavia, NY — Don Hoover, Director of Live Racing at Batavia Downs, has announced that Tom Agosti has been named as the new race secretary for Batavia Downs starting with the 2024 summer/fall live harness racing meet.

“Since coming to Batavia, I have been serving double duty as both director of live racing and race secretary and in order to have both positions be better managed, I have decided to hire Tom to handle the daily draws so I can concentrate more on running the business,” said Hoover.

“With Tom’s knowledge of the local horse colony and their connection’s needs for proper classification, having him write the condition sheet here to be reflective of the meet they are coming from will be advantageous to all racing participants.”

Agosti has been a fixture on the western New York harness racing circuit since 1977 when he launched a 31-year driving career that ended in 2011 due to back issues. During that time, Agosti won 1,435 races, $4.4 million in purses and multiple driving titles.

Shortly after parking his race bike for the final time, Agosti was hired as the assistant race secretary at Buffalo Raceway in 2011, moved to the top spot there in 2014 and has held that position ever since.

Agosti has also served as the race secretary at The Red Mile early meet since 2016 along with his duties as charter and program director. He has given up his positions there to transition to the Batavia job.

Although Agosti loved being in Kentucky, he said the opportunity to take the Batavia position was something he could not pass up.

“Working at the Red Mile was great. I loved the people down there and it was just an overall great environment to be in. But it was only three months out of the year. The position at Batavia amounts to seven months overall, including the winter meet, and the best thing is I get to go home every night,” said Agosti.

“Like Don, I also feel having a uniform condition sheet bridging the two meets will be beneficial for all the local horsemen and will also help the smaller stables be more successful year-round. Our main objective here is to have the racing be fair and equitable for everyone involved.”

Live racing kicks off at Batavia Downs on Saturday, July 27 at 6 p.m.

by Tim Bojarski, for Batavia Downs