Collateral Form: Connect the Dots Between Runners
Not every runner faces every other runner. When horses haven't met directly, how do you compare them? That's where collateral form comes in — it traces connections through shared opponents to build a comparative picture.
If Horse A beat Horse C by 3 lengths, and Horse B lost to Horse C by 2 lengths, collateral form suggests a 5-length advantage in Horse A's favour. RaceMetrics builds on this principle by adjusting for weight carried, race class, and recency to produce weight-adjusted verdicts for every pair of runners in today's race.
The 3D Network Graph
Collateral Form presents these connections as an interactive 3D force-directed network you can rotate, zoom, and explore. Large coloured nodes represent today's runners (each with its own colour and card number). Smaller grey nodes are the shared opponents — the link horses that two or more runners have previously faced.
The connections themselves tell the story: green edges show a win against that opponent, red edges show a loss. Gold edges indicate a direct head-to-head between two of today's runners. Opponent nodes grow larger the more of today's runners they connect to, making them more valuable for comparison.
How to Access and Explore
Open any racecard and click the Collateral tab (it sits after Future Form). Drag to rotate the graph, scroll to zoom. Hover over any runner node to highlight its connections; click to open a side panel showing all pairwise verdicts against the other runners.
Refine Your View
The Period control lets you filter how far back to search for shared opponents (6 months, 1 year, 2 years, or all time). Min Links lets you set a threshold — show only opponents connecting 2+ or 3+ runners — which reduces visual clutter. Reset View returns the camera to its default position, and Labels toggles horse names on or off.
Click any matchup in the side panel to expand it and see the individual race details behind each verdict.
