Who can use it: Enterprise and above.
What is Collateral Form?
Collateral form compares runners who haven't met directly by looking at how they've performed against shared opponents. If Horse A beats Horse C by 3 lengths, and Horse B loses to Horse C by 2 lengths, collateral form suggests Horse A has a 5-length advantage over Horse B.
RaceMetrics takes this further by adjusting for weight carried, race class, and recency to produce weight-adjusted collateral verdicts for every pair of runners.
The tick boxes in the rankings table take a runner out of the collateral calculation on this view only. To drop a horse from every view of the racecard at once, use the hide button beside its name instead — see Hide a horse on every view.
The 3D Network Graph
Collateral Form presents connections as an interactive 3D force-directed network that you can rotate, zoom, and explore:
- Large coloured nodes represent today's runners (each runner gets a unique colour with their card number)
- Smaller grey nodes are shared opponents — horses not in today's race that two or more runners have previously faced
- Green edges mean the runner beat the opponent in their shared race
- Red edges mean the runner lost to the opponent
- Gold edges indicate a direct head-to-head (two of today's runners met in a previous race)
- The larger an opponent node, the more of today's runners it connects — making it a more important "link horse"
How to Use
- Open any racecard and click the Collateral tab (after Future Form)
- Drag to rotate the 3D graph, scroll to zoom in/out
- Hover over a runner node to highlight all its connections (other nodes dim)
- Click a runner node to open the side panel showing all pairwise verdicts against other runners
- In the side panel, click any matchup to expand and see the individual race details
Controls
- Period: Filter how far back to look for shared opponents (6 months, 1 year, 2 years, or all time)
- Min Links: Only show opponents that connect at least this many runners (2+ or 3+). Higher values reduce clutter
- Reset View: Return the camera to the default position and clear any highlights
- Labels: Toggle horse name labels on or off for a cleaner view
- 3D Graph: Toggle the 3D network on or off. When off, only the side panel and rankings table are shown — useful on slower devices or if you prefer the tabular data. Your preference is remembered across sessions via localStorage
Weight-Adjusted Verdicts
The side panel shows verdicts adjusted for weight carried using a distance-variable lbs per length scale, reflecting the fact that a length is worth more at shorter distances where the pace is faster:
- 5f: 3.5 lbs per length
- 7f: 3.0 lbs per length
- 1m: 2.9 lbs per length
- 10f: 2.4 lbs per length
- 12f+: 2.0 lbs per length (aligned with BHA standard)
Jumps Distance Normalisation
Beaten distances in jumps races are naturally much wider than on the flat — the average beaten distance in a hurdle (~25L) is almost 3x that of a flat race (~9L). To prevent jumps collateral verdicts being misleadingly inflated, beaten distances are normalised to a flat-equivalent scale:
- Flat (5f-8f): No adjustment (baseline)
- Flat (10f+): Slight reduction (0.85x at 10f, 0.75x at 14f+)
- Chase: 0.45x — a 20L beaten distance counts as ~9L
- Hurdle: 0.38x — a 25L beaten distance counts as ~9.5L
- NHF: 0.33x — a 30L beaten distance counts as ~10L
This means collateral advantages are comparable across codes — a +5L verdict in a hurdle carries similar significance to a +5L verdict on the flat.
In addition to weight and distance normalisation, the following factors are applied:
- Positive values (green) mean the selected runner has a collateral advantage
- Negative values (red) mean the opponent has the edge
- Confidence is based on how many data points exist: High (5+), Medium (2-4), Low (1)
- Race class and recency are factored in — recent races and higher-class races carry more weight
Date-Anchored Analysis
When viewing a past race, the collateral form only considers form before that race took place — giving you an accurate picture of the information that was available at the time. For upcoming races, all available form is included.
Rankings Table
Below the graph, a summary table ranks all runners by their net collateral advantage across all pairwise matchups. This gives a quick overview of which horse has the strongest collateral form in the field.
Tips for Best Results
- Competitive handicaps produce the densest networks — experienced runners with many runs will have more shared opponents
- Group races tend to show strong collateral links since elite horses frequently face each other
- Maiden races will often have sparse connections since horses have fewer previous runs
- If the graph looks sparse, try extending the period to "2 years" or "All time"
- Direct head-to-head meetings (gold edges) are the most reliable form evidence