New Zealand's Shanks wins women's individual pursuit

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Alison Shanks celebrated her second rainbow jersey with an emphatic victory in the individual pursuit to seal New Zealand's most successful ever showing at the Track World Championships.

Shanks dominated her final of the 3000m individual pursuit over old adversary Wendy Houvenaghel (GBR) to repeat the world championship title won in the same event in 2009.

Shanks, who set a new personal best of 3:27.268 to top the qualifying positions, was in front from the second lap. She stretched the gap to 1.5 seconds at the 2000m mark and was in complete control from that point, winning in 3:30.199 on the slower track, with the Northern Irish rider more than two seconds behind.

"When they came out with so many fast times in qualifying I thought man I have to make a PB just to make the final. I was absolutely stoked with my rides today," Shanks said.

"I've been world champ before but it is so hard to get. Once you have had that feeling once, you want it again even more.

"My rides in the TP (team pursuit) showed I had good form. All the data pointed to that but it was a matter of putting it out there. I haven't been focussing on the individual pursuit so it was a little bit of an unknown but my legs felt great today.

"It was totally like a home crowd. There were so many Kiwis that came over and gave me so much support.”

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