TEN-TIME Paralympic equestrian medallist Anne Dunham feels that she has nothing left to prove after hanging up her stirrups last week.

The 68-year-old put an end to a career that has spanned 23 years last Friday as she conceded it was the right time to leave the sport that has changed so much during her time in the saddle.

Dunham, who lives in Worton, has long suffered from a neurological condition known as dystonia, which was only correctly diagnosed in 2011, but that did not prevent her from collecting 32 championship medals for Great Britain in a sport that made her feel on par with everybody else.

However, with the next Paralympics in Tokyo in just over three years, Dunham said it was time to bow out on top.

“It was a tough decision because I have had an absolutely fantastic time and I was still going well,” she said.

“I managed to stay at the top for 23 years, so I thought I better cut and run.”

Having entered the sport at the age of 40, Dunham first competed at the Paralympics in 1996 at Atlanta, but it took until 2008 in Hong Kong for her to claim her first individual gold, on a horse she met through a friend of daughter Amber.

“Teddy came to me just for a hack and we didn’t expect anything else from him other than a bit of fun, and he ended up a world champion, a European champion and a Paralympic champion,” she explained.

“We kind of made a pact when I first saw him. I went up and tried him out and he was standing there, looking quite full of himself, and nobody thought he would do it.

“When I took him up to team training, they said he would never do it but six months later, they took me to Belgium on him and he won, and went on winning from there.

“He liked to be the centre of attention and he liked work. He had such a wonderful rhythm.”

While the highlights have been retold numerous times, it is the lows during her career, including missing out on her home Olympics in 2012, that Dunham puts as the driving force behind her success.

“The lows often kept me in the sport,” she added.

“After missing out on London 2012, I think a lot of people thought I would stop.

“It made me want to fight more and the lows are there to keep you going, to prove to yourself that you can do it.

“I think I have got to the point where I don’t need to prove that anymore.”