My experience was different - I flew IAH-AKL-SYD departing the US on March 30th which meant I landed in AKL and my connecting flight was on April 1st. I needed all those status credits for that whole journey to qualify for gold by March 31st, and although I slipped back to silver for a few days, once the flights credited properly (including a UA flight MEX-IAH on March 30th, which I also needed in order to qualify) my status clicked back up to gold again. No action needed on my part, or special favours from the Elite team.
All of which is not to say that you should book your flights as I did and necessarily expect it all to work out, but it's one more data point for the record.