BEIJING (AFP) - Australia's Libby Kosmala has competed in an astonishing ten Paralympic Games - but the sharp shooter has no intention just yet of locking up her guns, with London 2012 firmly in her sights. Kosmala first competed at the Heidelberg Games in 1972 but her involvement in the Paralympics goes back even further, with a stint as secretary to the Australian team in Tel Aviv in 1968, although she was not selected to compete. The 66-year-old, who has been a paraplegic since birth, has notched up nine golds over her 36 years in Paralympic competition but missed out on a medal in Beijing, finishing fourth in one of her four shooting events. A keen sportswoman, she was disappointed not to be part of the Australian team in Israel in 1968. "I saw people competing in swimming and they were swimming slower times than I could swim and winning medals, so I thought next time I go away I will be competing," she said. The main difference in those days of Paralympic competition, apart from the smaller size of the event, was that all of the athletes were in wheelchairs, she explained. In 1972 she entered as an all-rounder, taking part in swimming and track and field and taking home a bronze from the pool. She continued to compete in multiple sports in 1976, including archery and pentathlon, before later specialising in shooting. In Toronto in 1976 she won her first shooting gold but Kosmala's most successful Games was the New York-Stoke Mandeville Games in 1984, in which she won four golds. Kosmala said the scale of the Paralympics started to increase in 1976, when visually impaired athletes and amputees were included. Along with the growth of the event itself, she said the UN's International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981 helped to change attitudes. So what, after all these years are her most treasured memories? "My first gold medal in 1976 was pretty special, especially as it was against allcomers, men and women. "When I went forward to receive the gold medal they said 'you wouldn't be winning the medal, it would have to be a man.' I said 'no, I think it's me'," she said. The Australian said the four golds she won in 1984, along with four world records, changed the way she was perceived. "After those Games I was recognised as an athlete with a disability and not just someone having a go," she added. "I was accepted by the South Australian Institute of Sport as a scholarship holder, the first disabled athlete from South Australia to gain a scholarship." She followed up her success in 1984 with three more shooting golds in Seoul in 1988, where her husband also won a gold for wheelchair lawn bowls pairs. Now, still inspired by the thrill of competition, she is setting her sights firmly on London in four years' time. "I still feel very fit and am probably the fittest shooter here on the Australian team," said Kosmala, who until her mid-50s believed she had spina bifida. Her condition is now believed to due to complications at birth. "I enjoy training and I enjoy shooting. Before I came here I was training about four times a week for two or three hours a session. "The competition is getting stronger every Games and more world records are getting broken. It challenges me to keep training and to get the scores higher and higher." Kosmala, who works part-time in public relations and fundraising for a spina bifida association, will leave China with positive memories of a great Paralympics. "The whole of Beijing has been transformed into exquisite gardens, there are flowers everywhere and the traffic has been kept to a minimum right throughout our Games, which is the first time I know of that this has happened. "They've really treated us as part of the Olympics. We're not just tagged on," she said.