Name: Bo Kramer
Country: Netherlands
Sport: Women’s Wheelchair Basketball
Previous Paralympic experience: Rio 2016, Tokyo 2021
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Who is Bo Kramer?
11 years ago, she was an unsure 14-year-old girl trying out wheelchair basketball for the first time.
Today, Bo Kramer could be the best single player in the sport in the world. She leads a team that has gone from one of the pack to the class of the field.
Since bringing home an Olympic bronze medal from Rio in 2016, this Netherlands team has won two World Championship titles, and tore through the Paralympics draw to win in Tokyo.
The highlights of the Dutch team’s most recent major successes were victories over China in the finals, as both nations rise to challenge the past dominance of the United States and Canada in the sport.
Kramer’s all-around game has spearheaded the Dutch challenge. In Tokyo, she was called on to lead a gambling pressure defense that paced a fourth-quarter shutdown of an offensive-minded U.S. team to win their Paralympic opener.
In the gold medal match, she found herself open as the Chinese defense clamped down on post player Mariska Beijer. Kramer led the way with 15 points helping to secure a convincing 50-31 win.
She backed up those efforts two years later in Dubai at the World Championship. Kramer put up 18 points and 10 rebounds as the Netherlands pounded China 57-34 in the final and affirmed their status as the world’s best team heading into the upcoming Paralympic tournament in Paris.
As a young girl, Kramer saw herself wearing orange for her national team scoring goals. She was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer at age 11. She pushed through nine operations that saved the leg but left her unable to do the running and jumping needed for soccer.
“The fact that I wasn’t allowed to play football any more was, I think, the hardest thing of getting the cancer,” Kramer said to BBC Sport last year. “Every opportunity that I got, I took with both hands to get better and be stronger. But then I learned I wasn’t allowed to play football any more, and that was tough.”
It was at a Paralympic sports day at the age of 14 where she found her new dream. She had never been in a wheelchair before that day, but she was hooked from her first-made bucket.
“That was love at first sight,” Kramer stated in an interview with NBC Sports last year. “The fact I found my new love in this sport really helped me in my rehabilitation and the acceptance of the fact that I wasn’t able to play able-bodied sports anymore.”
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Her athleticism and energy shortened the learning curve. She made the under-18 national squad, and ended up with bronze at the Under-18 World Championship, which propelled her onto the 2016 Paralympic team and into a bright future in the game.
In 2023, she signed with British Wheelchair Basketball Women’s Premier League team Loughborough Lightning. Playing in the world’s only women’s professional wheelchair basketball league, after years of co-ed play, was part of her plan to better learn the point guard/floor leader role she would hold for her national team.
“I can play basketball, what I had to learn is how to lead a team,” Kramer said when she signed to play in the UK. “In Loughborough, I get a chance to lead one.”
She helped pace an already formidable side to a league championship while also juggling studies towards a master’s degree in biomedical science. Having fought cancer as a kid, she aims to become a cancer researcher.
Kramer also spoke to the BBC last year to mark LGBT+ History Month in the U.K., explaining how she came out as gay to her supportive parents in her late teens.
“I feel that in the Netherlands, being a lesbian is really well received,” she said. “I’ve never had any bad or any negative reactions for it — especially in the sports world. And the Paralympic world is far more accepting than I think the Olympic world be.”
Bo Kramer at the Paris Paralympic Games
Four years ago, Kramer was seen as an up-and-coming star. Heading to Paris, the 25-year-old is one of the athletes to watch in any sport at these games and plays for a Dutch side that is the favorite to win their second consecutive Paralympic gold medal.
She also comes off her second season at Loughborough which has bolstered her claim of being one of the best players in the world. She led the league in scoring average at 26.5 points per game. She shoots 62.5% from the field, also tops in the league.
In the Women’s Premier League final against Cardiff Met Archers, Kramer was shadowed by a game-long double team. She was able to fight through to lead all scorers with 18 points, but also opened up four other teammates to score in double figures in a 90-30 rout for the Premier League title.
Her team also looks to continue a dominant run in major competitions since the Rio Paralympics. The Netherlands has won each of the last six major competitions in the sport between their Paralympic win in Tokyo, their 2018 and 2023 world titles, and European Championships in 2019, 2021 and 2023.
