Natasha Baker is a busy lady. When she’s not winning Paralympic gold medals – and a whole lot more besides – she gives up her time to help out with the Cotswold Riding for the Disabled Association.

The well decorated dressage rider, who has won 11 gold medals across the top three competitions despite being only 27, has been patron of the Cotswold RDA since 2013 and retains a very close interest in all that goes on at the volunteer organisation.

“I gave a talk at Whatley Manor in Tetbury four years ago to help launch equine photographer Jo Hansford’s new business,” she recalls. “She was also raising money for the Cotswold RDA at the same time. I got a call soon after and the Cotswold branch asked me if I’d like to be their patron and I couldn’t say ‘yes’ quickly enough.

“It is a huge honour and great for me to be able to put something back into the RDA who did so much for me.”

Natasha suffers from transverse myeltis, a virus she contracted at the age of just 14 months. It affects the spine and leaves her with no feeling in her legs.

“The volunteers at the RDA are incredible people,” continued Natasha, “and it wouldn’t exist without them. Their work means that anyone with a disability can ride. They have horses and ponies with the potential to compete in carriage driving, dressage and even showjumping.

“There are regional competitions and then nationals but if people don’t want to compete there is plenty of opportunity for therapeutic riding. It’s so good for the riders because it gets them out and about and gives them the chance to meet new people.”

Natasha’s own competitive career began in the RDA, near to her home in Uxbridge, Middlesex, and she has never looked back.

She has loved horses almost from the day she could talk. Her parents lived on a farm and she was surrounded by animals.

“I remember watching the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney,” she said. “I was only 10 but I was totally enthralled and I told my parents that I wanted to win a Paralympic gold medal.

“From that day they have encouraged me all the way. They knew how determined I was and they never doubted me. I loved horses and I loved riding.”

Dressage was Natasha’s chosen discipline. “I love the elegance of it,” she said. “It’s the perfect fit for me. You get a horse at a young age and you do all the teaching.

“I like to think I’ve got a natural feel to it and I found it easy to get into a rhythm.”

She certainly has. Twelve years after telling her parents that she wanted to win a Paralympic gold, she was leaving the London Paralympics with not one but two gold medals around her neck.

A dozen years may sound like a long time but Natasha says that is not the case.

“I was very lucky,” she said, “I never imagined it would happen so quickly. In gymnastics they start young and finish young but in my sport they tend to start much later and get better as they get older.

“For me to win two gold medals by the time I was 22 was unbelievable.”

Not that Natasha had it easy. Her parents didn’t buy her first horse until she was 14 – “they wanted to be absolutely certain that I would go down the horse route and not the boy route,” she chuckled – before suffering heartbreak ahead of the Beijing Paralympics in 2008.

“I was on the long list for selection to Beijing and obviously I could potentially have been selected,” she recalls. “But then my horse Lazardo went lame. I was pretty devastated, not only for me but for my horse.”

Lazardo did compete again, briefly, but another injury forced his early retirement.

Natasha had another horse, Wald Minor – “he was 18 or 19 and a bit of an old school master” – but was on the lookout for a new horse... and that was when her life changed forever.

“I knew as soon as I saw JP that he was the horse I wanted,” Natasha said. “I instantly fell in love with him.”

It was to prove to be a marriage made in heaven as horse and rider built up an immediate rapport.

They went through 2010 unbeaten and were chosen as a reserve for the World Equestrian Games in Kentucky. More success followed in 2011 as they won two golds at the European championships – “we were told the best we could expect was a bronze, possibly a silver,” recalls Natasha.

Then came 2012 and the Paralympics on home soil where Natasha and JP rode into Paralympic GB folklore, winning two gold medals.

So how did she feel when she was on the podium with the eyes of the world upon her, the national anthem playing and two gold medals around her neck?

“There were so many different emotions,” she said, “I can’t think of an adjective to describe them. It still makes me feel goosy now. It was the most incredible feeling. I was so proud of JP, he was such a special horse and it all happened so quickly.

“I’m normally really emotional – I’ll cry at anything, but on the podium it felt like an out of body experience. It felt like a dream and I almost had to pinch myself to make sure it was real.

“Although I’d won gold medals before, the Paralympics were a completely different ball game. There was a lot of pressure but I loved every minute of it.”

JP was just 11 when he swept everything before him in London, which is young for a top horse.

Natasha planned that the Rio Paralympics in 2016 would be JP’s last hurrah – “I wanted him to retire at the top – so in 2013 bought five-year-old mare Sookie St James as her back-up horse.

“She was quite small and definitely a lady’s horse,” said Natasha. “We had an instant connection.”

JP, however, wasn’t giving up his mantle as number one, and 2013 saw him help Natasha to three gold medals in the European Championships in Denmark.

The following year, though, saw a blip with the world championships providing just one team gold and an individual silver.

“I put so much pressure on myself,” said Natasha, “I was desperate to be Paralympic and world champion. JP was spooked three times and sometimes it’s easy to forget that these horses are not machines.”

Sookie took centre stage at the European Championships in 2015 as Natasha won two silvers.

“It was amazing for her to do so well at that age,” Natasha said. “She was the youngest horse in the competition and I couldn’t have been prouder.”

Natasha now had a choice to make ahead of Rio – JP or Sookie – but in the end it turned out to be a relatively straightforward decision.

“I started competing JP again in 2016 and he’d got his mojo back,” said Natasha. “It was almost as if he was saying, ‘I’ll show you, Sookie’. He was awesome.”

The Rio Paralympics were “totally different” to the Games in London.

“I knew what to expect,” Natasha said. “I was like a rabbit in headlights in London, surrounded by so many incredible athletes.

“In Rio, I was so calm, so at ease. I’d worked so hard with my sports psychologist and just wanted to do my best.”

And her best was certainly more than good enough as she surpassed her London achievement by winning team gold as well as two more individual golds, seeing off her main rival Rixt van der Horst, from the Netherlands, in the process.

“My goal was to win all three gold medals and beat my Paralympic points record,” Natasha said. “I didn’t set a new record so that’s my aim for Tokyo in 2020. JP was amazing. He did get spooked but I knew him so well and he trusted me. He was awesome.”

Natasha was true to her word and retired JP after Rio. He still competed in a few a local competitions went hacking and was “just having fun”.

Then tragedy struck earlier this year. A cut on his hind leg under his tail became infected and despite the vet’s assertions that all would be well he eventually had to be put down.

“It was an incredibly rare bacterial infection,” said Natasha, her voice tailing off as she relived the pain she still feels. “It was so unexpected, I was distraught.”

Natasha has since bought another horse, a five-year-old called Fireball, and will compete on either him or Sookie in Tokyo. Before then there is the European Championships in Sweden and next year the world championships in North Carolina, so life is very busy for Natasha.

Not too busy, though, for Natasha to head to Cheltenham in her role as patron of Cotswold RDA. “I plan to get down there later this year and take some riding lessons,” she said. “And I keep in touch with a lot of them via Facebook which is great.”

Helen Kingscott, who is community funding director for the Cotswold RDA, said: “We are incredibly lucky to have Natasha on board. But there are so many volunteers who help make the organisation a success.

“We have so many fundraising initiatives. Last year we did a skydive and one of our riders, Becky Andrews, who has cerebral palsy took part, which was incredible. She comes to the RDA all the time and says that in a wheelchair she feels a little bit confined, but sitting on a horse makes her feel free. She says she doesn’t feel disabled anymore.

“The Cheltenham MP Alex Chalk also did the skydive. I mentioned it to him a few weeks beforehand and he said, ‘why not, everyone would like the idea of a politician being pushed out of a plane!’.”

• Cotswold RDA is based at Cheltenham Racecourse and was formed some 50 years ago. There are 225 riders who benefit from its work and they are supported by 160 volunteers.