The ‘look of eagles’ is a complimentary, albeit rather hackneyed, American expression used to describe the gaze of some, but very few, exceptional racehorses. As American novelist John Taintor Foote wrote in his short story ‘The Look of Eagles’, published in 1916, ‘The phrase, the look of eagles, has come to represent the proud, lofty spirit of the best Thoroughbreds in modern horse-racing.’
Although completely unquantifiable, the ‘look of eagles’ is believed to suggest that a horse is self-confident and comfortable, so much so that it need not pay attention to its immediate surroundings and, instead, gazes detachedly into the middle distance, towards nothing in particular. In other words, and at the risk of anthropomorphization, it is the look in the eye of a horse that is something special and knows as much.
Down the years, several champion racehorses, including Man o’ War, Seattle Slew and, more recently, Arkle and Frankel, have been said to have the ‘look of eagles’. In his 1937 poem, ‘Big Red’, which paid homage to Man o’ War, arguably the greatest racehorse of all time, Joseph Alvie Estes wrote, ‘The look of eagles was in his eye / And Hastings’ wrath in his heart’; Hastings, the grandsire of Man o’ War, won the Belmont Stakes in 1896. Likewise, on the other side of the Atlantic, veteran Newmarket trainer Clive Brittain said of his filly Rizeena, who won the Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot in 2014, ‘ I take more notice of the eyes than I do the coat. You can see that brightness in her eyes. They have the look of eagles about them.’
In Native American culture, the eagle is a sacred medicine animal, symbolising courage, strength and wisdom, among other desirable qualities, and the bald eagle is, of course, one of the symbols of the United States. These factors may account, at least in part, for the popularity of the ‘look of eagles’ to describe the traits of a champion.