He led the Dutch women gymnastics team to win the gold medal at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Kleerekoper's team scored 316.75 points, defeating Italy and the United Kingdom.

[1] Many years later Alida van den Bos, one of the gold-winning gymnasts, told in an interview how important Kleerekoper's contribution was: "The training for the Olympics always took place at indoor gymnasiums even though the Olympics that year took place at an outdoor stadium.

Five members of the gold-winning team were Jewish and in 1943 were murdered at Sobibor and Auschwitz by the Nazis during Operation Reinhard.

On 2 July 1943 Gerrit Kleerekoper,[3] along with his wife Kaatje and their fourteen-year-old daughter Elisabeth, were murdered by the Nazis at the Sobibór extermination camp in German-occupied Poland.