Gierkink’s preview: Two grass races scheduled

The temporary rail moves in a bit from lane 5 to lane 4 this week. Rain is in the forecast for Wednesday, so the two turf races on the card could end up on the Polytrack.

Hearing Whispers and Desert Summer were both competitive first time out on the Polytrack earlier this spring, and their connections probably wouldn’t mind seeing the third race come off the grass. The debuter in the field of $50,000 maidens who possesses the best turf breeding is Stormy Fling, a 4-year-old daughter of Stormy Atlantic out of the turf debut winner Stroke the Tiger. First-timers Alilaction and Grandma’s House also possess some “green” in their pedigrees.

In the fourth race, Dig Alittle Deeper drops into a $40,000 non-winners-of-two claimer from a first-level allowance, for his second appearance of the meet. He can handle either local surface when he’s on his game, which is also the case with Ezzthetic, who went a little too fast on the lead before fading to third in a longer race at this level May 18.