One spectator at the Citizen’s Stakes was the renowned sportsman, gambler and race track operator Richard Ten Broeck who purchased the colt with a view toward running him in the Great State Post Stakes in New Orleans the following April.  Dr. Warfield had asked $5,000 for the colt, but Ten Broeck countered that he would make an initial payment of $2,500 to which he would add another $2,500 should Lexington win the Great State Post Stakes.  Dr. Warfield accepted the offer, saying, “Take him, I know he will win it.”

Renamed Lexington
Ten Broeck renamed the colt Lexington and planned to rest him until the following year, but he was to make one more start as a three-year-old.  A friend of the owner of a four-year-old named Sallie Waters challenged Lexington to a match race in three-mile-heats, offering to put up $5,000 on the filly to $3,500 on Lexington.  Despite the facts that Lexington had never raced at three-miles, had been very sick as little as little as five weeks prior to the race, would be facing an older rival and had been trained very little since his last victory (while Sallie Waters had raced as recently as November 21) the odds were too good for Ten Broeck to resist.  Held on December 2, the race was described the following day in the New Orleans Picayune:

  The word was given, and Sallie made a dash to take the track, without success; she kept up her run, however, and they both lapped to the stand, in 2:12 [excellent time for the state of the track, which was heavy and sticky].  Lexington shook her off in the second mile and passed the judges’ stand two lengths ahead in 2:10.  Sallie receiving the spur.  To any practiced eye the race was over, and in the third mile he came home an easy winner in 6:23½.  He cooled off so finely that $100 to $10 was bet before the second heat, which he won in 6:24½ without an effort, distancing her and establishing that despite his “four white feet and white nose” he is one of the best racers that has shown here for many years.

Following his victory, the proud Ten Broeck wrote the Spirit of the Times, a New York sporting newspaper:

As there has been considerable discussion in regard to the ability of Boston (sire of Lexington) and his progeny as racers, and as I happen to own some of them, of which I have a favorable opinion, to test their power, I make the following proposals . . .