Photo Credit Andreas Berger
Andreas Berger (* 9 June 1961), former Olympic athlete from Austria, is getting back into performance-oriented sport at the age of 60. About the picture: “The path or rather the slope is steep!” Andreas Berger has been part of the “Red Bull 400” event team since 2005. This is an international series that involves running up ski jumps.
“No Signs of Fatigue in Jubilarian Andreas Berger” was the headline of the “Österreichisches Volksblatt” (# https://volksblatt.at/keine-ermuedungserscheinungen-bei-jubilar-andreas-berger/) on 9 June 2021 on Andreas Berger’s 60th birthday. It went on to say: “For more than 20 years, Berger did “little to nothing” in sports after his active time. In the course of the Corona pandemic, the desire to sprint came over him again and with the World Masters Athletics Championships in Tampere (FIN) he has a clear goal in mind.”
The Seoul (1988) and Barcelona (1992) Olympian is first looking forward to competing in the 60m and 200m heats at the EMACI 2022 in Braga.
When Alfred Hermes tried to reach the managing director Andreas Berger of an event agency in Altmünster (AUT) by phone at 9:00 a.m., his son answered and asked to be called back because his father was at training.
In an email to EMA President Kurt Kaschke, Andreas Berger, managing director of an event agency in Altmünster (AUT), summarises how and why he came to Masters athletics:
Andreas Berger:
Even as a young person, I came to athletics by chance and very late, namely at the age of 20 – nevertheless I was able to develop very well at the time and spent a wonderful and exciting time in athletics.
Now it was actually similar again – when Corona moved into the country, I thought that now there was a lot of time available and I could spend this time training again.
On the occasion of my 60th birthday in June 2021, I felt motivated to enter performance-oriented Masters athletics…
Well – with all the aches and pains that an older body has to cope with, it’s fun again to deal with the topic of speed and to sound out what the body is still willing to give.
It is indeed exciting, because the training sessions from back then (note: as a young competitive athlete) are still haunting my mind.
However, I very quickly got rid of this approach and I think I have now found an approach to training that is age-appropriate and where the focus is on having fun.
I consider my greatest successes from my time until 1993 to be:
- European indoor 60m champion, 1989 in Den Haag (6.56 sec.)
- Olympic final with the Austrian 4x100m relay team, 1992 in Barcelona
- Victory at the LA Meeting 1989 in New Dehli against Carl Lewis
- Still Austrian record holder over 60m (6.56 sec.) and 100m (10.15 sec.)
A.H