New Zealand's women's pair of Juliette Haigh and Rebecca Scown overcame a disrupted build-up to the world rowing championships at Lake Karapiro to claim the world title on Saturday.
They won their final by 3.12s, the biggest margin of the day with their racing time of 7m 17.12s. Britain was second with the United States third.
After their European tour Scown needed surgery for tendinitis in her forearm and after surgery she suffered an infection which delayed her return to training a little longer.
"It was a little bit nerve-wracking at the time when you have that amount of time out but we both kept focused and kept cross-training and it made us all that more eager to get training and get back into training and in hindsight it may have been a good thing for us, it kept us fresh and wanting to do it," she said.
"We did what we wanted to do today, we went out and controlled our race and were confident and are really happy."
Haigh said she had been surprised the United States pair of Zsuzsanna and Erin Cafaro had not been more prominent, but at the same time until they had crossed the line they expected that anything could happen.
"It's been a while [five years] since I've been a world champion, but this one is pretty special," she said.
"To it at home and with Rebecca, we've got a cool partnership and we've had a lot of fun leading up to this."
Scown said it was a great feeling to have achieved a world title, something that no-one could take away from her.
Haigh said she was keen for the pair to stay together through until the London Olympic Games but that was in the selectors' hands.
"But if we keep performing we'll be together," she said.