MALVERN mountain bike star Liam Killeen showed his experience and kept his head, allowing his tactics to pay off with gold after an absorbing race at the Commonwealth Games.

Australia's Chris Jongewaard delighted the home crowd at Lysterfield Park by leading the field out in the men's individual cross-country cycling event.

His strong start in the blistering heat left 23-year-old Killeen, a bronze medallist in Manchester in 2002 and two times World Cup U23 champion, trailing in his wake.

However, Jongewaard faded in the heat as Killeen and English team-mate Oli Beckingsale made up two minutes and overhauled him with two laps of the eight lap race to go.

Beckingsale took the lead, with Killeen in third, the pair separated by the 2002 silver medallist, Canada's Seamus McGrath.

"I knew it would come down to the last couple of laps," said Killeen, "Jongewaard was awesome on the first few laps but I knew he would slow down, so I just stayed with him."

In a thrilling move, Killeen swept past both men on a rocky uphill corner. Beckingsale stayed close to Killeen's wheel and tried to challenge for the lead again as McGrath began to lose touch. Briefly, it looked as though Beckingsale would pass his team-mate, but Killeen was too strong and rode the last 2k of the rocky course with a smile on his face to finish 15 seconds clear in 2.13.11.

"The weather conditions were really tough out there," said Killeen, "The course was really tough. With a lot of speed, one mistake and you're gone. Every second counted, I haven't raced since October so I was nervous going in.

"There were half a dozen threats in the field, but I had a lot of self-belief."

Killeen will be able to take his golden achievement into Sunday's road-race event.

Silver medallist Beckingsale said: "After all the success of the England guys in the velodrome, Liam and I were under a lot of pressure and we showed we are really world class."

Killeen's next major event is the opening round of the UCI World Cup cross country series, taking place on the Carribean island of Curacao on April 2 - ten days before his 24th birthday.