The 63-year-old Winter Paralympic silver medallist and double world champion will lead a strong team - all hailing from Scotland - featuring two other members of the team that finished second four years ago at the Turin 2006 Winter Paralympics, Tom Killin and Angela Malone, when the sport made its debut in the Games.

They are joined by Aileen Neilson, McCreadie's partner who comes from a family of curlers and who has taken leave from her job as a primary school teacher to train for the Games, and Jim Sellar, a veteran of four World Championships.

McCreadie, one of only two Britons to have won medals in both the Summer and Winter Paralympics, could hardly contain his excitement at being named as skip and claimed that the team are in great shape ahead of the Games which take place in March.

He said: "It is an honour for me to skip the British team at the Paralympics in Vancouver.

“I make up 20 per cent of the playing team and there are four others who are truly world class performers.

"We have worked extremely hard to get back into winning ways with the results from this year’s tour clearly indicating we are on the right track.

"Preparations have gone really well and we plan in the next nine weeks to hone ourselves into a formidable adversary ready to take on the rest of the world."

It will be the seventh Paralympics that McCreadie has been involved in, either as a competitor or a coach, since making his debut at the Summer Games in Heildelburg in 1972, where he competed in swimming.

At the 1976 Paralympics in Toronto and Montreal he took part in basketball, swimming, and bowls, winning two bronze medals in the latter event.

After competing at his third Paralympics in 1980, held in Arnhem, McCreadie turned to coaching basketball, and within four years he was in charge of the Britain team.

In the space of a decade, that team earned world silver and bronze and European bronze as well as appearing at the 1988 Seoul Paralympics, finishing 11th, and the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics, where they ended two positions off the podium.

McCreadie, voted Scottish Coach of the Year in 1993, took up curling in 2001, winning a bronze medal within a year at the 2002 World Championships.

He was part of the all-Scottish team that contested the inaugural Paralympic wheelchair curling event in Turin four years ago as favourites for gold, having won the world title in 2004 and 2005.

Phil Lane, the chief executive of ParalympicsGB said: “We are delighted that we can announce the wheelchair curling team that will represent Britain at the Paralympic Winter Games.

“We are confident that they will make us proud and we hope that the team will also bring home a medal for the second successive Games.”

British Curling chairman Chris Hildrey stated: "I'd like to congratulate these athletes on their selection by ParalympicsGB as we enter the final stages of preparation for medal success in Vancouver.

"The passion, commitment and professionalism they have displayed over recent months along with the support of their families has been admirable and with their selection now confirmed, they will be able to focus efforts on achieving the ultimate goal in Vancouver whilst hopefully enjoying the Paralympic experience."

McCreadie and his team face an extremely tough opening match on March 13 when Britain face host nation and defending champions Canada at the 6,000 capacity Vancouver Paralympic Centre, the venue that will host every match in the tournament.