England’s Oli Beckingsale and Liam Killeen will be racing head to head at the State Mountain Bike Course, Lysterfield Park in the Commonwealth Games mountain bike racing in the middle of the night on Wednesday (UK time). Whichever way we look at the form and however much we strive for objectivity, Beckingsale and Killeen look like real medal prospects.

If we were just looking at UCI rankings then you’d put Killeen (ranked 8th in the world) as the sure-fire winner, but the rankings never tell the whole story. Beckingsale’s on good off-season form with a strong win against new Giant team-mate Roel Paulissen in Cyprus and the antipodean riders are in full racing flow – Australia’s Chris Jongewaard was recently crowned Australian National Champion and Oceania XC Champ, and he’s very familiar with the Lysterfield course. Aussie Nationals runner-up Sid Taberlay will be racing at the Games too. Then there’s other strong riders to think about, like New Zealand’s Kashi Leuchs and Canada’s Geoff Kabush. But the Brits will be fired up and fresh, and the apparently quite technical 6.4km course should suit Killeen in particular. We’re not going to risk looking like idiots by making a prediction, except that it’s going to be a good race. Other Brits to cheer on include Simon Richardson (England), James Ouchterlony, Gareth Montgomerie, Robert Wardell (all Scotland), Steven Roach (Wales) and Lewis Ferguson (Northern Ireland).

The women’s race will feature a smallish field, and the smart money’s got to be on Marie-Hélène Prémont from Canada. She was the only rider other than Gunn-Rita Dahle to win any World Cup rounds in 2005, so with Norway not being part of the Commonwealth the Canadian should have a clear run. Nothing’s certain in this game, though. Watch out for New Zealand’s Robyn Wong or even Myra Moller (racing for the Cook Islands but resident in Australia), who retired after the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester but was persuaded to have another go at her “local” Games. UK interest will be centred upon Scottish champion Ruth McGavigan.

There’ll be live coverage of the mountain biking events on BBC1 starting at 11.15pm on Wednesday night and concluding at 7am on Thursday morning, but there’s a bunch of other stuff mixed in there too. If you’re fully up to speed with the new digital TV age then you can find the women’s race on BBC Interactive 2 from 11.30pm to 2am and the men’s race at 3am until 5.40am. Recording it to view at a more civilized hour might be your best bet…