Baltimore ? This was supposed to be the tough one?

Smarty Jones, the Philly flash, turned his nine Preakness rivals into scrapple Saturday afternoon, racing into history with a record 11 1/2-length win over Rock Hard Ten in the second jewel of racing’s Triple Crown.

The place to be in three weeks will be Belmont Park, as Smarty Jones will attempt to become only the 14th Triple Crown winner in history and the first since Affirmed in 1978. It’s a familiar Belmont story: This will be the sixth time in the last eight years a horse will be trying to accomplish that feat, one that has gained the aura of being an impossible task because of the many good horses who have tried and failed.

What makes it different is this wonderful creature is only the third one who will try to do it and keep his unbeaten status intact. Majestic Prince, who failed to win the Belmont in 1969, and Seattle Slew, who did win it in 1977, are the other two.

Not even the legendary Slew demolished his foes the way Smarty Jones did on a gorgeous sunny afternoon at Pimlico. The time for the mile and three-sixteenths wasn’t remarkable (1:55 2/5, a full two seconds off the stakes record), but the track hadn’t been especially fast all day.

What was stunning was the comical ease with which Smarty Jones won the 129th Preakness.

“Smarty really reminded me of Secretariat the way he pulled away,” said Gary Stevens, Rock Hard Ten’s jockey, who flew over from France for the honor of being Smarty Jones’s closest pursuer.

“Close” is used here in the same sense that Baltimore and Paris are “close.”

“I was absolutely no match for the winner,” Stevens said. “He’s something very, very special. I had another gear. Unfortunately when I hit another gear, Smarty Jones had about four more gears.”

Smarty Jones, with jockey Stewart Elliott up, leads the field to win the Preakness. Smarty Jones, the Kentucky Derby winner earlier this month, won by a record 111/2 lengths Saturday at Pimlico in Baltimore.

In the days leading up to the race, trainer John Servis had gone so far as to call his perfect (now 8-for-8) colt “vulnerable,” because of the short two weeks of preparation time between the Derby and the Preakness.

There were other concerns, like knowing Lion Heart would try to steal the race on the lead, and that fresh horses like Rock Hard Ten and Eddington would be on his tail hoping to pick up the scattered pieces of Smarty Jones in the stretch. If Smarty Jones was vulnerable, then so was Superman.

Philly’s favorite son returned $3.40, $3.00 and $2.60. Rock Hard Ten and Eddington, who both missed the Derby when they failed to qualify on earnings, were second and third.

Even after waiting out a delay in the post parade after Imperialism needed shoe repairs, and standing calmly in the gate while the mammoth Rock Hard Ten had to be gator-wrestled into the gate, the 3-5 betting favorite made his usual alert break under jockey Stewart Elliott. Mike Smith, on Derby runnerup Lion Heart, made a right-hand turn coming out of the gate and floated Smarty Jones and Elliott nearly into the five-path going into the first turn.

Elliott weighed the options of taking the wide trip or risk getting boxed in by horses, and opted for the overland route.

“I figured if he had me out there, I may as well stay where I’m at until we get down the backside,” Elliott said. “I had the option to see if Mike was going to get him back in. If he didn’t have him back in by the next turn, I was going to inside of him. That’s what happened, and I had plenty of horse.”

As Lion Heart drifted out toward Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Smarty Jones exploded through the opening and took the lead just inside the quarter-pole. It was an electrifying move that could power all of Philadelphia for the next three weeks.

Smarty Jones galloped across the finish line on a loose rein, his ears swiveling like satellite dishes as he tried to pick up the sounds of any horses who might be threatening him. All he heard was the roar of a record crowd of 112,668 sunburned, parched, delirious Smarty fans.

This was hard? If that’s the case, then the mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes on June 5 could resemble nothing more than a victory parade.