Maya Lindholm

Maya Lindholm

Maya Lindholm in Sydney, July 2012
Personal information
Nationality	Germany
Born	(1990-12-20) 20 December 1990 (age 26)
Sport
Country	Germany
Sport	Wheelchair basketball
Position	Power forward
Disability class	2.5
Event(s)	Women's team
Team	Hamburger SV BG Baskets Hamburg
Coached by	Holger Glinicki
Achievements and titles
Paralympic finals	2012 Paralympics, 2016 Paralympics
Medal record Wheelchair basketball Paralympic Games 2012 London Women's Wheelchair basketball 2016 Rio de Janeiro Women's Wheelchair basketball IWBF World Championship 2010 Birmingham, Great Britain Women's wheelchair basketball 2014 Toronto, Canada Women's wheelchair basketball

Maya Lindholm (born 20 December 1990) is a 2.5 point wheelchair basketball player, who played with the German national team that won a gold medal at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London. It also won a European title in 2011 and was runner-up in 2013. President Joachim Gauck awarded the team Germany's highest sporting honour, the Silbernes Lorbeerblatt (Silver Laurel Leaf).

Maya Lindholm was born in Hamburg on 20 December 1990. In 2004, she awoke one morning with severe back pain, and within hours she could no longer move her legs. Doctors diagnosed spinal cord inflammation. She is studying to be an occupational therapist at the BG Trauma Hospital in Hamburg Boberg. She began playing wheelchair basketball for fun at the hospital in 2005. In 2009, she was selected as part of the national team.

Classified as a 2.5 point player, Lindholm plays power forward. She was part of the team that won the European Championships in Nazareth, Israel, in 2011, thereby qualifying for the 2012 Summer Paralympic Games in London. As part of the team's preparation, they toured the United States and Australia. The German team went through the group stage undefeated, but started off slow in its games against the United States and China, winning these games by six-point margins, and seemed to play its best basketball only in the final minutes of a game.

In the Gold Medal match in London, the team faced the Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team, which had defeated them 48–46 in Sydney just a few months before. In front of a crowd of over 12,985 at the North Greenwich Arena, they defeated the Australians 58–44 to win the gold medal, the first that Germany had won in women's wheelchair basketball since 1984. They were awarded the Silver Laurel Leaf by President Joachim Gauck in November 2012, They were also named Team of the Year in Disability Sports for 2012, an annual award voted for by 3,000 members of the Association of German Sports Journalists.