Liam Killeen's grandfather is, in the Commonwealth champion's own words, "very, very ill" but the Malvern-based mountain biker felt he was with him for every turn of the pedals as he won gold for England.
Killeen and Oli Beckingsale claimed an England one-two after a stirring comeback to overhaul Australia's Chris Jongewaard who led by over a minute and a half at one stage.
Jongewaard was still in the lead going into the penultimate lap but Killeen, bronze-medallist while still a junior in Manchester four years ago, and Beckingsale broke Australian hearts by storming past their champion amid the dust and gravel of the 53.75 kilometre charge through the foothills of the Dandenong ranges.
Killeen said: "My grandfather's very, very ill at the moment. He's got cancer and he's going to be 94 in April.
"I spoke to him on the phone just a couple of days ago and I really felt he was with me today. It was nice to have him in the back of my mind."
The softly-spoken 23-year-old is rarely expansive about anything other than racing and he let his legs do most of the talking around Lyster-field Park, south-east of Melbourne.
Going into the second of seven laps, Jongewaard had already built a 54-second lead while Killeen and Becking-sale, 29, were in a chasing group of six also including Canada's Seamus McGrath, New Zealander Kashi Leuchs and Jongewaard's team-mate Sid Taberlay.
Killeen did much of the pace-setting in the early stages and he looked to have done too much when he drifted off the back of the group as Leuchs and Taberlay sought to break away.
But, while Jongewaard was slowing the longer the race went on, Killeen, ranked fifth in the world, and Beck-ingsale were sustaining a steady rhythm which ate up the Australian's lead.
From being 75 seconds behind at the end of lap five, they were 47 seconds behind at the end of lap six.
Suddenly they were on the Australian's shoulder and from then on the only threat to England's cyclists was Canadian McGrath and the narrow track.
McGrath, too, fell away leaving Killeen and Becking-sale to dispute the lead between them.
Having battled back to the chasing group after fixing a fault in his chain, Becking-sale could not keep up when Killeen went for the line.
However, the Bristolian, who is in the form of his life at the moment, was happy enough with his first medal at a major championships.
"Last year I had a big jump which kind of put me into the medal possibilities here," he said. "But to actually do it is a different matter to talking about it."
McGrath took bronze while Jongewaard left with nothing and the battle between British and Australian cyclists will go down to the final day.
The hosts have won 20 medals while the home nations have secured 19 with just the men's and women's road race still to come.
The situation is markedly different from four years ago when the Australians dominated, winning 22 medals, 10 of those gold. England failed to win a single event but they have collected four golds this time.
They may not win another here but, in the Isle of Man's Mark Cavendish and Wales' Nicole Cooke, British cycling has two cyclists with the kind of aggression which wins road races while Scotland have a well-balanced team who believe they can get among the medals.
Much of the improvement is down to British Cycling's performance director Dave Brailsford, who has proved adept at nurturing young talent like Killeen and Cavendish.
He took a risk on another promising rider in the women's mountain-biking with 19-year-old Amy Hunt entered in her first competitive race in the discipline in eight months.
The Bolton rider surprised just about everybody by taking fourth place, despite starting the day ranked 497th in the world.
