James Magnussen has admitted that his Commonwealth Games gold in the 100 metre freestyle was the win he needed to prove that he still had it after losing at this year's national titles.

The final in Glasgow was always going to be a match-up between Magnussen and his usurper Cameron McEvoy, with the pair a class above the rest of the field. And while it was decided in a slower race than expected, the Australians put on a drag race down the final lap with Magnussen winning in 48.11 seconds. McEvoy touched in 48.34 while Tommaso D'Orsogna finished in 49.04 to complete the cleansweep of the podium for the Australians.

Magnussen said he had used his unexpected loss last April as motivation to devise a successful game plan with coach Brant Best, in which he would follow McEvoy until making his move with 25 metres remaining.

Magnussen leads clean sweep in 100m freestyle:

"Having a loss at trials was not ideal so I just wanted to get the win tonight to reaffirm to myself that I've still got it and am still going good and now I can focus on getting the quickest race I can against the Americans at Pan Pacs (in late August) because they'll bring some more heat again," Magnussen said.

"At the end of the day it's a pretty simple sport, whoever touches the wall first gets the gold medal and Brant and I devised what we thought was a bullet proof plan and it worked, so it was really, really simple.

"Trials hurt a bit but it was probably that initial embarrassment of losing and then I was pretty much over it but it did motivate me and I probably trained quite a bit harder between trials and here because of it. It would have been hard to do ad-nauseam and not have a lot of motivation."

While Magnussen was caught out chasing the world record at the nationals last April, he said he did not have that problem in Glasgow because he was not in the shape to attempt breaking Cesar Cielo's mark of 46.91 because of a recent back injury.

"I knew the world record was not on the table tonight. I wasn't as fresh or as fast as I have felt so that probably helped if anything," said Magnussen, who has a history of contracting illnesses before major meetings.

"I seem to swim better or more relaxed when they're a little bit of adversity, injuries, pneumonia (which he has previously had) I'll take anything but it really allowed me to just focus on the win and do what I needed to."

When the team was in a pre-Games camp in Manchester, McEvoy spoke glowingly of Magnussen's record and declared that he was still the one to beat despite his win at the nationals. When asked if he believed he could beat the dual world champion at a major international competition, he said: "that's pretty hard to predict there's so many different aspects that come into final outcomes at big international competitions but I'm probably not even going to go back and focus on that. I'm going to go back and focus on bettering my best time."