It came down to the final arrow but Danielle Brown managed to retain her Paralympic individual compound archery title at London 2012 – edging British rival Mel Clarke into silver.

Brown and Clarke produced a titanic tussle in the gold medal match at the Royal Artillery Barracks in the capital, which was decided by Clarke’s final shot.

Needing a ten to win or a nine to take into a final arrow shoot-off, Clarke could only manage a seven to hand Brown a 6-4 win and with it back-to-back gold medals.

And while Brown, a qualified law graduate, appeared very composed collecting her medal, she admitted the tension had been starting to get to her in the build up to the Games.

“It’s been crazy, it really has. I didn’t think the pressure would affect me the way it has,” said Brown. “Everyone said you are under so much pressure and I thought ‘no, it will be fine’.

“But I’ve been really feeling it in the last couple of weeks so to come here and put it together, I’m really chuffed to bits with that.

“It’s been great to have the profile of Paralympic sport raised. Before I went to Beijing I must have done two interviews in total and coming here I’ve done filming, I was doing two interviews a week.

“I think it helped a lot shooting first because my arrows were all gone and she had to play catch-up as it were.

“I did find myself thinking ‘please don’t get a ten’ when she lined up the final arrow.”

Two years ago in Delhi Brown was part of the non-disabled England team that competed in the archery at the Commonwealth Games.

Despite having also been to World Cup events with the British non-disabled team, however, she insists she will not be switching from the compound to the recurve in an effort to qualify for the Olympics in four years’ time.

She added: “I’m not going to switch to recurve, I enjoy my compound way too much. I’d like to shoot more able-bodied.

“I’ll have a bit of time off but I definitely want to go to Rio. I definitely don’t want to go back into law, archery is way more fun than sitting behind a desk.”

* Lloyds TSB, proud supporter of ParalympicsGB and proud partner of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Get closer to the Games at lloydstsb.com/london2012