Bo Kramer: Loughborough Lightning's Dutch wheelchair basketballer juggling ambitions on and off court

Bo Kramer has played wheelchair basketball since the age of 14

Bo Kramer is a world, European and Paralympic wheelchair basketball champion who is determined to help Loughborough Lightning maintain their status as the team that has never been beaten.

The 24-year-old Netherlands international can also mathematically model an epidemic outbreak.

Sitting an exam to prove it meant she missed the start of Loughborough's Women's Premier League title defence.

The victory against Worcester Wolves kept their immaculate record intact, having won every game on the way to collecting the crown in the competition's inaugural season.

Kramer is their high-profile international recruit for 2023 and is set to feature for the first time against East London Phoenix in the capital on Sunday.

Delaying her Lightning debut to work on her masters in biomedical science is all part of what it means to have big ambitions on and off court.

"It's not hard for me to stay motivated," Kramer told BBC Sport. "I have to balance this dream of becoming a cancer researcher and being the best wheelchair basketball player in the world.

"They are two things that don't really work together. They both take up a lot of time.

"When I'm in Loughborough, it's really clear what I have to do there and when I'm here in the Netherlands, it's clear what I have to do here. That's what I've needed.

"I just believe that if you have a dream you can achieve it. If you are your own hero, nothing holds you back to reach those dreams."

Kramer (left) helped the Netherlands win wheelchair basketball gold at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo in 2021

Kramer sees her move to the world's only professional women's wheelchair basketball league as a way to realise her ambition to be the best player in the world by the Paris Paralympics in 2024.

She has spent much of her club career playing in Germany, where men and women play in the same team.

Kramer was part of the Essen side that won promotion to the top flight last season, but with a desire to be a starting guard she decided a move to England was best in the lead up to the World Championships later this year.

"I can play basketball, what I had to learn is how to lead a team and in Loughborough I get a chance to lead one," she said.

'My dream was to be a footballer'

Kramer was 14 when she took up wheelchair basketball.

It was three years after bone cancer was found in her right leg.

Nine operations - the complete removal of her tibia from her right leg, its replacement with the fibula from her left leg, as well and metal rods and screws - rid Kramer of the cancer but left her in pain when trying to play sport.

She could walk, but the discomfort of running and jumping meant chasing her dream as a footballer was gone.

"The fact that I wasn't allowed to play football any more was, I think, the hardest thing of getting the cancer," Kramer said.

"I knew it wasn't deadly, I knew I would probably get better.

"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."

Kramer won Paralympic bronze in 2016 before going on to help the Netherland's take gold in Tokyo

Until she attended a Paralympic talent day, she had never sat in a wheelchair before.

But when she did, she says "it was love at first sight".

"It was the first time I experienced playing sport again without pain in my legs," Kramer added.

"So in one minute my joy of playing sport was back and I think that was really beautiful.

"This dream of being a football player was switching over to going to the Paralympic Games and the fact I created this new dream gave me this new goal to train for every day, and to show the world that nothing can stop me."

While Kramer "had to learn to drive" her wheelchair after taking up the sport, she quickly progressed and earned national recognition.

Within five years she had helped the Netherlands to a world title in 2018, with the first of her two European crowns coming a year later.

At the delayed Paralympic Games in Tokyo in 2021, she completed the set of major international honours with a gold medal in Japan.

Kramer is set to make her debut in Loughborough's second game of the season

Her early years in the sport saw her benefit from the help of one of the country's most famous footballers, in Johan Cruyff.

The legendary forward and manager's foundation has helped children with disabilities access sport worldwide.

Kramer, like Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, is now an ambassador for the foundation and continues to see Cruyff - who died in 2016 - as someone she looks up to.

"He was a great football player, but also a person that really did a lot for the community and society," she said.

"I want to do both as well. That's why I want to go into cancer research."

Kramer, who has already done a degree in physiotherapy, wants to focus her career off the court on childhood illnesses.

She sees it as going full circle.

"Being an athlete is really cool, but it's all about me and I do it because I love it," Kramer said. "It's my dream and my goal.

"I also love helping other people.

"I'm really aware that I was really lucky as a child that they found out early that I had cancer.

"There are a lot of children and a lot of people with cancers that are not curable yet. If I can be even 1% part of a process that helps find a medicine, or I can help in research, I just think that is my life goal."