"My goal was to go out a bit faster than this morning and I did that. I rode the same pace through the middle of the ride and still managed to come home strongly."
Indeed, Gough was close to 1.5s behind Dennis going into the fourth and final kilometre. Coach Tim Carswell was pacing out his deficit track side, so Gough was acutely aware of the ground he had to make up.
"I knew I was down and had a bit of work to do coming into that last kilometre and luckily I managed to push hard to the line."
Gough started taking considerable chunks out of Dennis, which must have set the pulses of his parents, Rod and Wendy, racing in the stands. With a lap to go he had seized back the initiative.
It was New Zealand's fourth medal of the champs - all bronze - equalling the four they won last year at Apeldoorn and in 2010 at Copenhagen. It is Gough's third world championship medal, but first as an individual rider.
"This rates really, really highly," Gough said. "The team pursuit was the main goal here and I only did two training sessions coming into the individual pursuit so to do a PB in front of nearly a home crowd is great."
The gold was won by Australian Michael Hepburn, with compatriot and world record-holder Jack Bobridge taking silver.
