The debut appearance of triathlon at the Paralympic Games came to an end this afternoon as the women took centre stage on Copacabana beach.

Great Britain's Andy Lewis claimed a historic gold on day one of the competition, and three more medals were added to the tally by the women on Sunday.

Alison Patrick and guide Hazel Smith picked up a silver in the PT5 classification, finishing in a time of 1:13.20, just over a minute behind Australian gold medallist Katie Kelly.

Patrick collapsed with exhaustion upon crossing the finish line, but spoke to Sports Mole shortly afterwards about how her silver medal was worth pushing herself to the limit.

Congratulation Alison! How are you feeling? It was a dramatic end to the race...

"Yeah, I'm feeling much better now. I was so hot, I just got overwhelmed with how hot it was during the run today [but] you forget about all that when you've got a medal round the neck."

You clearly gave it everything you had, but is there still a small feeling of disappointment that it is not a gold?

"A little bit. More the fact that the run's my strength and I couldn't run to my potential today because it's so warm, but we did everything we could today and put together a good race, so we have to be happy for that."

Just how hard was it running in this heat?

"It was ridiculous. I'm from Scotland, it's not this hot!"

Hazel, what has it been like being part of this historic event - triathlon's first appearance at a Paralympics?

"It's just amazing, it's just incredible. And yesterday the boys as well, just honoured to compete on this platform. It's such a big step forward for the sport as well. Hopefully it will just get the word out there and get more people involved in the sport."

It's all over now - the final medal ceremony has been completed and the triathlon is over. Do you think its debut appearance on this stage has been a success?

Smith: "I hope we've proved that it can be really competitive, we can put on a really good race, for us having three or four triathletes up there and racing, so I hope it was a good show."

Patrick: "Yeah I just hope we can build on this and we can get more categories in for 2020, so that there's not lots of categories that feel like they've missed out, like today.

"It's growing. You want a sport to be competitive and when there's not that many numbers you can't really put it on the international stage. But now that there's much more people doing it, it can be. You can push forward and get it on the international stage."