It’s too early in the history of the Belmont Oaks and Belmont Derby, both of which will be run for just the second time Saturday at Belmont Park, to know whether the races – technically continuations of the Garden City and Jamaica – are white elephants or instant successes. Either way, the purses for these grass races for 3-year-olds still look like typographical errors: $1.25 million for the Belmont Derby and $1 million for the Oaks. There are 10 seven-digit purses in New York this year, and Saturday’s card has two of them. The Belmont Derby is now the second-richest race of the year in New York, behind only the $1.5 million Belmont Stakes, and the same as the Metropolitan Mile, Whitney, and Travers. The Belmont Oaks is matched only by the $1 million Ogden Phipps as the richest race of the year in New York for fillies of any age or specialty, worth more than the Coaching Club American Oaks and the Alabama combined, and three times more than last Saturday’s Mother Goose. Each of Saturday’s races is worth more than two dozen other Grade 1 features with long histories of producing champions. Dirt is vastly more important than grass in American racing, but Saturday’s purses turn that ranking on its head. There are two stakes races in each 3-year-old division Saturday. For males, there’s the $1.25 million Derby on grass and the $500,000 Dwyer on dirt. For fillies, it’s the $1 million Oaks on grass and the $150,000 Victory Ride on dirt. It’s only been one year, but the inaugural results of the two races did not suggest that seven-digit purses were either necessary or appropriate. The winners – Mr Speaker in the 2014 Belmont Derby and Minorette in the Oaks – are a combined 0 for 6 since their triumphs last July 5, and neither received a single first-, second-, or third-place vote for the 3-year-old colt or filly Eclipse Awards. There is simply no way to justify the size of the Derby and Oaks purses within the context of the New York stakes schedule or their national importance, but there are other motives afoot that may make them seem more reasonable. As part of its strategy of stockpiling stakes races on a handful of big days during the year, the New York Racing Association believed that July 4 was an opportunity for an additional blockbuster day of stakes racing. The problem was that the Grade 2 Suburban was not much of a headliner, and even adding races such as the Dwyer and Victory Ride to the card made it less than a rousing program. The two rich new grass races, however, somehow make the July 4 card greater than the sum of its parts, a sum that now reaches six graded stakes worth a combined $3.7 million. A late pick four of the Oaks, Suburban, Derby, and Belmont Sprint Championship is an attractive one, as is a pick six that starts two races earlier with the Victory Ride and Dwyer. There’s a bunch of interesting racing outside the two rich ones: The return of Texas Red and the stakes debut of Speightster in the Dwyer, Tonalist at odds-on in the Suburban, and Private Zone vs. The Big Beast in the Sprint. Of the two main events, the Oaks drew a bigger and stronger field – 14 entrants, including two Grade 1 winners, as opposed to nine entrants and no Grade 1 winners in the Derby. The male race has some perfectly nice horses such as Divisidero and Bolo, but no one of championship caliber. Belmont should be ashamed for falsely advertising the race as “The World’s Best Take on America’s Finest.” The two most dangerous horses in the Belmont Derby may well be the two European homebreds making their American debuts, Canndal for the Aga Khan and the recently gelded Postulation for Juddmonte. They’re not the best horses in their own barns, much less on the planet, but you really don’t have to be to win a Grade 1 on grass in the United States. The Oaks, however, has a legitimate world-class filly in Lady Eli, who won last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf so impressively that she finished second in the voting for champion 2-year-old filly, named first (23 votes), second (185 votes), or third (32 votes) on 240 of 265 ballots. This is believed to be the best juvenile Eclipse showing ever for a 2-year-old who never raced on dirt. She returned as a 3-year-old five weeks ago in the ungraded local prep for the Oaks, the Wonder Again, and beat a decent field despite a rough trip and appearing to be less than fully cranked. She has yet to lose in five career starts, and given the weak and chaotic state of the 3-year-old dirt fillies this year, she could contend for a title with a strong grass campaign. If she wins this Oaks, it will be a bigger payday than winning the Acorn, Mother Goose, CCA Oaks, Alabama, Personal Ensign, or Beldame.