The 21-year-old Yorkshireman, who had won four of the seven World Championship series events this earlier this year, came into the final with a 351-point lead over Javier Gomez of Spain.

The Gold Coast final was worth 1,200 points, and Brownlee needed only a top-five finish to clinch the Championship.

The former junior and under-23 world champion finished in a time of 1 hour 44min, 51sec.

He had positioned himself well coming out of the swim and ensured himself a strong position in the main pack of the bike ride before he and main rivals Gomez and Jan Frodeno, the Olympic champion, broke away on the run having made up a 90-second deficit on the early leaders.
 
The Briton and Gomez dropped Frodeno with little over 500m to go.

As a result defending world champion Gomez had to settle for second place and came in six seconds behind Brownlee while Frodeno of Germany finished third.

Brownlee said: "It's absolutely amazing.

"I couldn't have asked for anything more.

"Every athlete in every race wants to win and I really wanted to win the world title.

"I was going to give it everything and I was delighted with how the race went."

The race included a 1.5 kilometre swim leg in the Nerang River, a 40km cycle route and a 10km run.

The race was held in perfect temperatures of about 20C (68F) on the tourist resort strip.

Brownlee clinched the overall title with a perfect 4,400 points - 800 from each of his previous series wins in Madrid, Washington DC, Kitzbuhel and London and the 1,200 for this victory.

Gomez was second overall with 3,959, followed by today's  fourth-place finisher, Maik Petzold of Germany, with 3,442 and Frodeno in fourth overall with 3,162.

Brownlee said: “I knew that if Javier [Gomez] didn’t win overall, I could afford to come tenth and still win the Championship.
 

“It was his prerogative to chase me down and so I just let them go and see what he wanted to do.”

Brownlee said Gomez produced some testing surges over the final two kilometers.

He said: “I just had to do everything I could to hold on.

“I just told myself to get to the top of the hill and I just got to the top of the hill and hung on and on the last lap I just gave it everything I had – and it was downhill."

Brownlee's younger brother Jonathan, 19, has the chance to make it a final double tomorrow when he contests the junior race.

A second Brownlee win would mean a treble for Britain after Hollie Avil yesterday won the World Under-23 women’s title ahead of compatriot Jodie Stimpson, who took the silver.

Helen Jenkins, the reigning world champion, will also feature tomorrow, in the elite women’s race.

She is currently ranked number  in the world after taking bronze in the race London.  

Jenkins could be coming into form at just the right time but Australia’s Emma Moffatt remains firm favourite to take the title with New Zealand’s Andrea Hewitt and Sweden’s Lisa Norden also top contenders.


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September 2009: Brownlee confident ahead of Australian final
August 2009: Brownlee back on top of the world after Hyde Park victory
July 2009: Brownlee completes hat-trick of victories
June 2009: Capital performance from Brownlee puts him top of the rankings
May 2009: Brownlee destroys field to win World Cup triathlon