HOLLYWOOD PARK : The Wicked North Is Among Top Horses Gracing Meeting

The morning after The Wicked North won the Oaklawn Handicap at Arkansas, Cot Campbell, the owner of Wallenda, the eighth-place finisher, was scouting horses for sale at Keeneland.

“The Wicked North’s not nominated for the Pimlico Special,” somebody said.

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” Campbell said. “Because that’s where Wallenda’s headed.”

It is good news, too, for Hollywood Park officials that The Wicked North is back in California, where his trainer, David Bernstein, is looking at the $300,000 Californian and the $750,000 Hollywood Gold Cup as probable starts for the 5-year-old this summer.

Top horses help make the meet, and Hollywood Park is counting on these standouts during the 68-day season that opens today:

--The Wicked North. The disqualified winner of the Santa Anita Handicap is the best older horse on dirt in the United States.

--Bien Bien. Winner of three of four grass starts at the Santa Anita meet, including Sunday’s San Juan Capistrano Handicap, the 5-year-old chestnut might run on turf and dirt at Hollywood. The $500,000 Hollywood Turf Handicap is next, and the Gold Cup on July 2 is a possibility.

--Paseana. The two-time Eclipse Award winner has won stakes at Hollywood in each of the last three years, and with $2.8 million in winnings is edging up to Dance Smartly, the retired female record-holder with $3.2 million.

--Flawlessly. A champion grass mare for two consecutive years, the 6-year-old daughter of Affirmed has used the summer meet as a warmup for fall, when she has won Hollywood’s Matriarch three consecutive times.

--Arcangues. Is the Breeders’ Cup Classic winner, at 133-1, a one-race fluke or a horse to be reckoned with? The answer, under Arcangue’s new trainer, Richard Mandella, begins unfolding Sunday in the $150,000 John Henry Handicap.

A horse that won’t be at Hollywood, at least temporarily, is Mamselle Babette. John Forsythe’s 4-year-old filly, winner of four stakes at Santa Anita, was highweighted at 122 pounds for Friday night’s $100,000 A Gleam Handicap, but will skip that to run in the Sixty Sails at Sportsman’s Park in Chicago a week from Saturday.

Chris McCarron, who rode Mamselle Babette in her last victory, is expected to reach the 6,000-victory mark early in the season. Of the 10 other jockeys who reached 6,000, only two--Bill Shoemaker and Laffit Pincay--did it before their 40th birthdays. McCarron won’t be 40 until next March.

McCarron is scheduled to ride Golden Klair, the 117-pound co-highweight, in the A Gleam, which is the first of 35 stakes on the schedule. Cargo will also carry 117 pounds.

The meet ends on July 25. The track will be open Wednesday through Sunday, with Monday cards scheduled for May 30, July 4 and July 25. The 13 Friday cards will be run at night, with first post at 7. First post for most daytime cards is 1.

Instead of quinellas, Hollywood Park will offer the EZQ, a new $2 minimum bet. There willbe three payoffs, for the horses that finish first and second, first and third or secondand third, in either order. The EZQ will be available for all races.

R.D. Hubbard, the chairman of Hollywood Park, had hoped to open the track’s card club by now, but there has been a delay in getting state approval for the group that will lease the club.

An application from a group that includes former football figures Don Klosterman and Eddie LeBaron is under consideration by the state attorney general’s office.

Hubbard has been in the forefront among those track executives who want to combine racingwith other gambling, a philosophy that has more recently been embraced by Dick Duchossois of Arlington International in suburban Chicago and Charles Cella of Oaklawn Park in Little Rock, Ark.

Duchossois is trying to get a riverboat gambling license for Arlington.

“Tracks must do this in order to survive,” Duchossois said during a visit to California last week. “I once said that many tracks will go out of business by the year 2000 if they don’t get into other gambling businesses that have surrounded them. I’ve now changed that estimate to the year 1995.”

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Blues Traveller heads a field of seven in today’s $44,000 allowance race on the turf course at Hollywood Park. Blues Traveller will be ridden by Eddie Delahoussaye and is assigned 118 pounds for the 1 3/16-mile race. Blues Traveller, a 4-year-old Irish-bred son of Bluebird, has won two of his 11 lifetime starts and earned $195,373.

Others entered are Special Comic, who will be ridden by Kent Desormeaux and is assigned 118 pounds; Wise Words, Alex Solis, 118; Prospector’s Ghost, Laffit Pincay, 115; Golden Post, Chris McCarron, 115; Phoenician, Gary Stevens, 115, and L’Honorable, David Flores, 115.

The $100,000-added Senorita Breeders’ Cup Handicap will be run Saturday.