Boaz Kramer, at The Blogs

Boaz Kramer

Israel Paralympian Silver Medalist, Adaptive Sport Thought Leader

Aug 30, 2026, 3:24 PM

Be Careful What You Wish For: Paralympic Sport at a Crossroads

Israeli wheelchair basketball player Amit Vigoda playing in team Santo Stefano in Italy last year before moving on to play for Hannover United in Germany. From Amit Vigoda's personal collection.

When rehabilitation expert and the Jewish (what else would he be?) Sir Ludwig Guttmann initiated the first Stoke Mandeville Games (the precursor to the Paralympics) for British war veterans in the late 1940s, I don't think he imagined that,...

Jan 28, 2026, 8:17 PM

Faxing genius: Between world-class innovation and third-world bureaucracy

Renovation team discussing the overhaul of the Israel ParaSport Center’s semi-Olympic pool (photo from Israel ParaSport Center's collection)

I recently picked up an American guest from his hotel in Tel Aviv to go to dinner. He had just arrived a few hours earlier to Ben Gurion Airport. He sat down in my car and sighed. How is...

Dec 31, 2025, 3:11 PM

Battle of the classes

Just the other day, in a heavily promoted event in Dubai (note to self - the rebranding of the United Arab Emirates as a world leader in hosting huge sporting events and its effect on the world of competitive...

Sep 3, 2025, 8:41 PM

We’re Israeli, of course we’ll host

You watch a game of wheelchair basketball. It’s a close one. Let’s say it’s the Nation's Cup or some other important international tournament. The host team is leading by four points and you are impressed with the players' agility...

Jul 23, 2025, 7:17 PM

The man who changed paralympic sports

There are some athletes who are great at their sport. They may even be the greatest. Nobody plays basketball better than LeBron James, right? He is just great at basketball. You may debate him being the greatest but you know...

Jul 6, 2025, 3:15 PM

Not all dreams are created equal

Every child dreams of being Steph Curry, or Roger Federer. No one dreams of being a wheelchair basketball player, even the best ones in the world. In fact, everyone’s dream is literally NOT to be in a wheelchair at all. Ever. In...

Jun 23, 2025, 10:16 AM

Featured Post

Ninety seconds

If you're wheelchair-bound, and you can't make it down the stairs to a shelter in time, the rest of us need to change that; our values demand it

Jun 4, 2025, 8:43 PM

Ode to a lioness

This wasn’t what I planned. My new Times of Israel blog was supposed to be about Paralympic sports, insights and interesting angles of the wonderful world of adaptive and competitive sports, about classifications, history, and inside information on the...

Apr 28, 2025, 6:10 PM

How spinal surgery changed my mind on disability’s great debate

I’m “writing” (speech to texting) this blog post lying in a hospital bed — Room 22, Bed W (for “window”) — in the neurosurgery department of the Tel Aviv Medical Center (Ichilov). I was just brought up here after...

Mar 18, 2025, 4:34 PM

If we ever see a Paralympic sport in the Olympics, it will be wheelchair tennis

I don’t think that California native Brad Parks, who was paralyzed from the waist down following a ski accident and invented wheelchair tennis in 1976, ever imagined that 40-something years later, his sport would be featured in all four...

About Me

Boaz Kramer is a two-time Paralympian and a silver medalist in quad wheelchair tennis from the 2008 Beijing Games. Born with arthrogryposis, he has been involved in adaptive sports since age five and has served as Executive Director of the Israel ParaSport Center in Ramat Gan since 2011. He is the treasurer of the Israel Paralympic Committee and the Israel Paralympic Sport Association, a board member of the Paralympic Sports Association, and chairs the Israel Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis Committee. Boaz lives in Tel Aviv with his wife and three children.

Contact Me