“I can’t talk bad about Portland Meadows,” the novelist Willy Vlautin once told Willamette Week. “It’s one of the only friends I got left.” Visit any small track and know there’s one smaller. Emerald Downs is a relatively dinky diamond, but for trainer Kendra Lyons and her husband, Bill, it’s the big time. The Lyonses raced horses at Portland Meadows before it closed, a departure that Bill said was “kind of devastating.” “That was Kendra and my main thing, was to go to Portland, get a motel room, and stay for several days,” reminisced Bill. It’s worth noting here that one of Vlautin’s books is called “The Motel Life.” At another defunct track, Sun Downs in Kennewick, Wash., that would have represented a residential upgrade for the Lyonses. “We had a tack room there,” recalled Bill. “We set it up with a little kitchen and refrigerator. We stayed in the horse trailer. When it got a little windy, the trailer would go crazy. We had several wins.” :: Access the most trusted data and information in horse racing! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. Until this year, Kendra had not raced her horses outside of Oregon, save for that short stint at Sun Downs. In her inaugural season, 2014, she raced at Portland Meadows, Tillamook, and Crooked River, and has since mainly raced at Grant’s Pass, the southern Oregon town in which she and Bill live. This year, Kendra has branched out, winning three of 29 races and hitting the board 52 percent of the time at Turf Paradise. She’s preparing to start a pair of horses at Emerald Downs in Sunday’s sixth race, a six-furlong starter allowance with a $10,000 purse. “I’m not sure what Kendra’s doing, but she’s doing it,” said Bill. “She’s been driving like a maniac between Emerald and Turf Paradise.” Bill has never been to Emerald Downs but says he’s going to try and make it there for Sunday’s eight-race card, which has a first post of 1:50 p.m. One of the horses his wife will saddle is Chelsiesdanziglite, who’s owned by Shane Peacock and will break from post 5 under last year’s winningest Emerald jockey, Kevin Krigger. Krigger is off to a fast start in 2026, with an 11-4-3-2 record. Karlo Lopez, 12-4-1-3, is right there with him and will ride the other Lyons trainee, Fordy G, from post 2. Both of the Lyons’s geldings are front-runners. Same goes for the other six horses in the robust early season field. Neither Lyons horse has raced at Emerald, but Chelsiesdanziglite seems to have sprouted belated wings at age 6, notching a career-best 70 Beyer Speed Figure while winning his last race by two lengths on April 28 in Phoenix. Fordy G, however, has gotten the better of him when racing head-to-head at Grant’s Pass. The speediest of the speedsters looks to be Classic Cinema. Trained by Jorge Rosales, the 5-year-old reeled off four straight wins at Turf Paradise this winter and prevailed in his 5 1/2-furlong Emerald debut on May 9. But while he smoked Fordy G on Feb. 14 at Turf Paradise, he finished behind him last fall at Grant’s Pass. Whether Fordy G is a horse for that course or can translate his success to Emerald will be a determining factor on Sunday. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.