WILTSHIRE rider Anne Dunham tonight took her Rio Paralympic medal tally to three with a second individual silver medal in the para dressage events.
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Weir has said he will retire after April’s London Marathon.
Blake from Charlton Down, Dorchester, was drawn in the unfavourable outside lane which meant that he could see none of his rivals inside him, whilst Pavlyk, who finished third behind him in 2012, had the inside lane.
Baker had watched as team-mate and friend Sophie Wells won grade-four dressage gold for Britain on Wednesday, and ensured that she would be on the top step of the grade-two podium with a commanding performance.
The finals came in quick succession on the 200 metres course. Following her role in the women’s 4x100m relay win on Friday, she led Australia away with the opening backstroke leg in its narrow 4x100m medley relay runner-up finish to Great Britain.
Without Evegnii Shetsov, who won both the 400m and 800m titles at London 2012 and another strong contender in Artem Arefyev, Blake admitted he felt the weight of expectation as the new favourite. It was his first gold, after a silver and bronze at London 2012.
With four full days of competition remaining, Britain have 95 medals, 26 short of the total target set by funding partners UK Sport, with 43 of them gold.
Natasha Baker completed her hat-trick by winning the grade II freestyle event, while Sophie Wells – the fourth member of the victorious team; Pearson was not selected – took grade IV silver.
Her total goes towards the team event, with the result of that title to be confirmed later on Thursday.
“You’ve just got to train as hard as you can and hope that you’ll still be No. 1 when you get to the next Games”.
“I was watching the Olympics and watching the swimmers come out of the pool and saying how much of a rollercoaster the emotions were, and I completely understand what they were talking about now”. It’s just incredible and we all feel so good.
“Normally I don’t thank God for these type of things as I believe God has more important stuff to worry about”, he told NBC television.
Orla Barry won Ireland’s eighth medal of the Paralympics with silver in the F57 discus.
Her team mate Anne added: “We’ve worked for this for eight years me and my family and it’s wonderful to be here in Rio”.
“I had an injury, but managed to recover in time for the Games. There were doubts during the week so to throw over 30 meters is fantastic”.
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It added that the gold used to make the medals has been extracted without the use of mercury. However, the Wicklow woman topped the World Series table this year with two Road Race silver medals at World Cups events in Ostend and South Africa so will be expecting better today.
