As fantasy sports tours go, few are more fantastic for the thoroughbred aficionado than a trip to the US for the Triple Crown. Five weeks of top-class racing and irresistible wagering begin on the first Saturday every May with the Kentucky Derby, followed two weeks later by the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore and finally the Belmont Stakes on Long Island, where 120,000 amateur Sinatras demolish the official track song - New York, New York - as a fanfare for the year's most impressive three-year-old.

Each leg of the potentially historic three-timer - not completed since Affirmed tripped up in 1978 - provides a spectacle of such peculiar and pleasurable insanity that it would be folly for any race fan not to make the transatlantic journey at least once in a lifetime.

Making a mint

The madness begins at Churchill Downs in Louisville, where, under a fug of mint julep (the house cocktail of bourbon and vegetation), a surreal alliance of Presidents, boy bands, rap moguls, Middle-Eastern royalty, Kid Rock (he's a Derby fanatic) and the general populace spend two minutes yelling at the world's finest horses. If you want to know which one of these horses has the best chance of victory, it pays to know where to hang out in the days leading up to the big race.

Wagner's Pharmacy on 4th Street near the track and next door to Becker & Durski Turf Goods, is as good a place as any to start, early doors. They serve a hearty, rustic breakfast to a knowledgeable race crowd from 6am (on Oaks and Derby day) and soak up the overspill from the caf? on the track's back side. If you have racing contacts, or call ahead to the Churchill Downs museum in the first half of Derby week, it's well worth following breakfast with a visit to the barns and the morning workouts, where you can witness the contenders' talent and temperament first hand.

On the Wednesday night before the Derby, it's essential that you enter the scrum at Furlongs bar on Frankfort Avenue in Clifton, where one of the big-race jockeys will serve you your poison. It's a tradition, not a harsh infraction of the labour laws. In 2000, I was at first rather shocked to see Robby Albarado - the man who would pilot my selection, Captain Steve, to a forgotten eighth - tending bar there when, in my own estimation, he should have been resting or taking a sauna or something. Fear not: that's just the way they do things here.

Chilli and tips

Kern's Korner on Bardstown Road in the Highlands not only has great chilli, it's also favoured as a watering hole by lampooner and tipster Indian Charlie, aka Eddie 'Muggins' Musselman, whose free tip sheet (also available at indiancharlie.com) has been banned from Churchill Downs by the track management he delights in mocking. Further along the Bardstown Road, at the Hikes Lane intersection, is John E's (johnesrestaurant.com). 'It's a steak place,' says Amelia Baldree of the University of Louisville Thoroughbred Racing Club and co-founder of TurfAngels.com. 'A lot of trainers hang out there and there's autographed horse-racing memorabilia hanging up.' Naturally, the talk is all Derby.

However, all the insider knowledge in the world can't prepare you for the unique, searing experience of the big race. The crowd divides itself between the (freshly refurbished) grandstand and the infield, racing's biggest mosh pit, an infernal orgy of college students, girls gone wild and locals, all rendered lunatic by drink and sunstroke. In 1975, Bombay Duck finished last after being struck by a beer can thrown from the infield. From wherever you choose to spectate - and for my money it's under the Twin Spires, somewhere near the winning post - here's hoping your horse is the one awarded the winner's coveted blanket of roses.

Should that be the case, you'll be flush enough to best enjoy the Preakness at Pimlico, where, at the annual on-track Alibi Breakfast, owners and trainers dissect the result of the Kentucky Derby and stoke up gambling fires for the Triple Crown's second leg. Nicknamed Old Hilltop and founded in 1870, Pimlico is the second oldest US course after Saratoga. Seabiscuit beat War Admiral there in 1938, since when the track's Park Heights neighbourhood has gradually lost its lustre. Today, most race fans hole up waterside in downtown Baltimore during the build-up to the Preakness, and take a 20-minute taxi ride to the action.

On pre-race evenings, the Power Plant Live ( powerplantlive.com) is always a solid bet for music, beer and race talk; alternatively there's the less raucous surroundings of Morton's Steakhouse in the Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel, favoured by owners and trainers.

Strength and Preakness

This year, on Wednesday 18 May, the Preakness Celebration includes a rare screening of Stanley Kubrick's racetrack heist classic, The Killing, but if your selections still need fine-tuning, we suggest you bypass the cinema and stake your claim to a table at the Mount Washington Tavern on Newbury Street (mtwashingtontavern.com), arguably the city's best racing bar.

'That's where the people hang out who are going to the track during Preakness week,' advises Mike Gathagan, a long-time Preakness follower and our contact at Pimlico. 'Last year's winning trainer, John Servis, has tended bar and Gary Stevens basically lives there during Preakness week, as does one of our local riders, Ryan Fogelsonger.'

Gathagan got hooked on the Preakness on his first visit in 1983. 'It was a rainy day,' he recalls. 'Deputed Testimony was the last Maryland-bred to win the Preakness; it was a major upset. DT is still around, lives about 45 minutes from Baltimore, still producing horses.'

On Preakness day, the racing begins at 10.30am. There are 13 races, nine stakes, six of them graded. Gathagan recommends the two-day, 0 Turfside Terrace deal, which places you near the winning post, between the tote board and the turf course, right at the heart of the melee. Once on course, it may be worth tapping up Ted the Barber for a sub- haircut, because Ted's version of 'something for the weekend' is a complimentary tip. 'People go there all the time,' says Gathagan. 'The jock valets, the clockers - they hang out with Ted.' Ted, it's said, has the knowledge.

Gathagan says it could also pay not to overlook Pimlico face Frank Carulli, who posts the morning line. 'Last year, he picked two local horses that won stakes races on the Preakness undercard. Mr O'Brien, who set a track record at 11/1, and Abbondanza, who won the Grade 3 Hirsch Jacobs at 7/1. Frank's the man,' says Gathagan. In recent years - six out of the last eight, in fact - single horses have taken both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, producing a nerve-jangling shot at the Triple Crown on the second weekend in June at Belmont Park.

The Big One

Belmont is the largest track in North America and celebrates its centenary this year. Out of all three Triple Crown tracks, it's the most accessible. If you fly to New York and stay in Manhattan, the Long Island railroad will deliver you straight to the grandstand's doorstep. 'Racing has always been a very New York thing to do,' says the super-enthusiastic New York Racing Association's Francis LaBelle. 'People hang out in the back yard at Belmont. It's like being in Central Park.'

Belmont legend is in LaBelle's blood, and one year in particular sticks in his memory. 'The toughest beat in sports history - and I mean out of all sports - was probably 6 June 1998, when Victory Gallup got up in the last stride and got Real Quiet by a nose at the wire. I mean, he got him by the dirtiest of noses.'

A few years back, LaBelle would have sent you over to Espositos restaurant for insider race talk. 'Unfortunately, the people who ran that place passed on,' he says. 'And it's now a church. These days, a place frequented by a lot of the writers and a lot of the guys covering the event is Trinity (trinityrestaurant.com) on Jericho turnpike. It's kind of an Irish bar.' The shepherd's pie there is outstanding.

For a Belmont-centric pub crawl, visit Tulip Avenue in Floral Park. Exercise riders and other track people gravitate to the row of bars that includes Jameson's, McCarthy's and Jack Dugan's.

Once you've made your selections, sung New York, New York like a native and fleeced the pari-mutuel for the cost of your trip - and then some - it'll be time to head back to Manhattan for a celebration at Gallagher's Steak House, 228 W. 52nd Street, (gallaghersnysteakhouse.com). The restaurant's wooden walls are bedecked with old-time sports and racing photos, and the owners may even free up a space for the legendary three-year-old who has just become your handsome meal ticket. Cheers - and good luck.