Holger Glinicki was born in Hamburg on 25 October 1952. He was paralysed following a motorcycle accident in 1972 that broke his fourth thoracic vertebra. He became involved in disability sports, playing wheelchair basketball for RSC Hamburg, who were the German national champions in 1983, and played a total of 123 international games. He became assistant coach of the German women's national wheelchair basketball team in 2003, and then coach in 2006. The team won five consecutive European championships, in 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2011, and a silver medal at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing. The German team started off slow in its games against the United States and China at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, winning these games by slim six-point margins. Marina Mohnen thought that they played their best basketball only in the final minutes of a game. They defeated the Australia women's national wheelchair basketball team at the 2012 Summer Paralympics by 44–58 in front of a crowd of over 12,000 at the North Greenwich Arena to win the gold medal. It was the first gold medal that Germany had won in women's wheelchair basketball at the Paralympics since 1984. They were awarded the Silver Laurel Leaf by President Joachim Gauck in November 2012, and were named Team of the Year for 2012. Glinicki celebrated by plunging off Canary Wharf into London's River Thames. He was named Hamburg's coach of the year for 2012. Glinicki was philosophical about the win, noting in December 2012 that there were many awards and ceremonies, but that the memory of London was fading over time. He returned to coaching his club team, Hamburger SV, which included national team members Mareike Adermann and Edina Müller. It went on to win the national championship for the eighth time in 2013. The national team was not so fortunate, losing the European Championship to the Netherlands by a point, 56–57, before a home town crowd in Frankfurt in July 2013. In April 2014, Glinicki coached BG Baskets Hamburg to a win in the final of the International Wheelchair Basketball Federation Euro League Challenge Cup, its first International title, with a 62–54 over the Frankfurt Mainhatten Skywheelers. The team also won the Fair Play Award of the International Wheelchair Basketball Federation Europe.
