SATURDAY’s Gr1 Grand Parade Cape Guineas at Kenilworth has been described as the strongest in recent years – and several runners enjoy confident public support after individually impressive campaigns leading to the race.

Most members of the racing media have sided with the favourite, Captain America, including the panel of tipsters at Sporting Post, who marked this renewal of the Guineas, “the race of the year” and gave Captain America their vote over the Mike de Kock runner, Whistle Stop. Captain America also got the nod from Nicci Garner and Mark van Deventer at The Citizen’s Racing Express.

Cape-based Michael Clower, who writes for The Racegoer, is another who picked Captain America, although their official tipster Brendan Pather reckons Red Ray will come out on top.

In his preview of the race Clower points out that not a single Cape Guineas winner among the last ten started at odds of longer than 5-1, which makes it a two-horse race if history were to repeat itself for the 11^th time – only Captain America (2-1) and Red Ray (4-1), fall within this parameter in the current bookmakers’ market.

Whistle Stop and Forest Indigo (11-2), are the two others with strong media support – and the statisticians among them who read Clower’s report will be hoping that their fancy shortens into the 5-1 bracket!

James Goodman has been touting Alec Laird’s Forest Indigo for weeks on Winning Ways, and made the colt a racing certainty on the strength of his impressive win at Kenilworth just recently. Trainer Alec Laird commented: “He won very nicely, yes, but I’m not sure what he beat. There were some fair horses who are improvers in the field, but the opposition on Saturday is obviously going to be stiffer and he will need to be lucky from that draw.”

The Daily Sun and Sahorseracing.com fancy Whistle Stop and, naturally, when Mike has a top horse with a good form chance, mikedekockracing.com will be taking what could be a value price about the son of Silvano.

We’re pretty confident that Whistle Stop will finish in the first four, at the very least, which makes him an attractive banker for Quartet punters. Mike has only entered seven runners for the Cape Guineas since 2001, six of them finished in the money. Flight Alert won the race in 2001; Emperor Napoleon (2007) and Silver Flyer (2011), finished second; Kavanagh (3^rd) and Perana (4^th), contested the 2010 race; Meet At Malamala (4^th), earned a cheque in 2008.

Assistant trainer John Buckler will be saddling Whistle Stop for the race and he reported on Friday: “Whistle Stop travelled well and he’s in fine shape. I gave him a light piece of work on grass, on Thursday morning. He’s settled down and is ready.”