Effort and grit puts Warriner back on top

Sam Warriner has returned to top-level triathlon racing - and she means business.
The Whangarei triathlete claimed back to back honours in the Port Of Tauranga Half Ironman on Saturday, marking her return to top level racing after a cycling injury halted her International Triathlon Union World Championships Series campaign last year.
Warriner, who married partner Stephen Bradley last month, said she had a disrupted lead-up to the event and had to work hard for the win, against the best women's field the event has seen in its 21-year history.
Every winner of the women's title since 2002 was contesting the 2km swim, 90km bike and 21km run.
"It's a really good feeling to come away with a win when my training has been so disjointed," she said after the race.
"But I made hard work of it - I had a terrible swim, got stuck in the current, swam into a boat and got stuck under the buoy ... it was very messy and choppy out there."
Warriner exited the water knowing she had plenty of ground to make up. Once she was in the saddle, set for her 90km cycle she knew she had to ride as hard as she could to make up time, she said.
"I had a good bike ride, and by the 15km mark, I had moved into second (behind Australian based Swiss star Caroline Steffen) but the bunch were riding off me, using me as a pace setter. I soon had enough of that and put the pedal down and dropped the bunch on the second lap."

Steffen, a first national swimmer and professional cyclist led the run out 2 minutes and 40 seconds ahead of the Kiwi Olympian, who had reduced the time to 1min 20 sec by the 10km mark, running being her strongest of the three disciplines. By the final 3km undulating run around Mount Maunganui, Warriner had caught Steffen and went onto claim the women's title for the third time (2007, 2009 and 2010), in a time of 4 hours 17minutes and 4 seconds.
"I had a storming run, I know the Mount so knew what I had to do, and I got the break on the hills," she said.
"It's good to get a win like that where you have to work hard to get it - I think it shows strength of character - it wasn't a great day out there for me with the swim and all but I had enough grit to get there. It's a brilliant start to the year, my body felt good and the crowd got so excited when they saw me chasing down the leader, it was great."
Steffen was 18 seconds behind in second, and three time champion, Australian Rebekah Keat, was third after clocking the fastest run split of 1:22:48, with Joanna Lawn in fourth.
Warriner's attention will now return to the 2010 ITU World Championship Series, with the first race in Sydney in April.
Meanwhile, the elite men's field was taken out by Auckland teenager Michael Poole in 3:56:33, who at 18, became the youngest winner of the Tauranga half ironman.
Poole found himself in contention as he ran alongside  James Bowstead after one lap on the run.
Bowstead, 23, in his sixth attempt at the race, was expected to prove too strong on the last tough trek around the Mount base track, but it was the younger Poole who broke clear to win. Bowstead was second in 3:58.12, while Australian Tim Berkel had the fastest run of 1:14.29 to climb through the field for third.