Elgin curler Gregor Ewan has been named in the Scotland squad for the upcoming World Wheelchair Championships.
Ewan will make up part of the five-curler strong team – including Jo Butterfield MBE, Meggan Dawson-Farrell, Gary Logan and Hugh Nibloe – who will travel to Canada to compete between March 4-12.
The Elgin native represented Team GB at last year’s Winter Paralympics alongside Dawson-Farrell and Nibloe.
For the first time, the World Wheelchair Mixed Doubles will run simultaneously with the team event, with Charlotte McKenna and Robert McPherson selected for Scotland.
Ewan and the rest of the Scotland team will compete against 11 other nations in their competition, while the mixed doubles duo will battle with 22 countries.
For British Curling’s Paralympic head coach Sheila Swan, the World Championships represents an important opportunity to assess her players.
“Last season we had the challenge of preparing athletes for a Paralympics and a World Championships in the same season and now we are adapting to fielding teams in two World Championships being run simultaneously at the same venue,” she said.
“We are up for that challenge and thanks to our excellent support staff at British Curling, we are preparing our athletes as well as possible for this two discipline event.”
The line-up for the team event features a new face in Butterfield, a Paralympic gold medallist who was awarded the MBE for services to athletics before switching sports just last year.
“If you had said to me six months ago when I first transferred to wheelchair curling that I would be heading off to my first World Championships now I would have probably laughed,” she said.
“If I am honest the overriding feeling right now is excitement, though. I love competing, I always have and to compete at a major championships is what I really strive for.
“So thinking that in just over a month I will be competing at my first World Wheelchair Curling Champs it just gives me a buzz.”
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