But a strong attack made late in the day gave them a hard-won victory.

Santa Anna had but a short while in which to exult over the bloody and hard-won victory.

This hard-won victory has taken almost a decade to achieve.

The military will be offended, because I'm throwing away their hard-won victories.

Even so, the sentences were a hard-won victory for prosecutors, the police and the Fisher family.

However, the pension agency viewed the ruling as a hard-won legal victory.

Now, he is claiming a hard-won and costly victory.

"We must march not just to celebrate the hard-won legal victories of the past," he said.

And when we don't know quite what's happening, the crew's hard-won victories seem hollow.

Next to her latest challenges, though, those hard-won victories are looking like the easy part.