Bo Andreas Gustafsson is a Swedish race walker. He has represented his country at the World Championship in Athletics on four occasions. He qualified for 2 Olympics by making the IAAF standard B in 2008 and IAAF standard A in 2012 but was not selected on the Swedish Olympic Team. His highest accomplishment is a 20th-place finish at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin, Germany. He was also 12th at the 2010 European Athletics Championships in Barcelona and 21st at the 2011 IAAF World Athletics Championships in Daegu, South Korea. At the 2012 USATF Pan American race walk trials in Valley Cottage, NY he became the third fastest Swedish race walker in history by walking 3:50:47 in the Men's Open 50 km race which is his Personal Best. He is a Commercial Pilot by Education. His father and coach is Olympic silver medalistBo Gustafsson.
After College he retired but came back in 2007 and qualified for the World Athletics Championships in Osaka, Japan by placing 26th at the European Cup in a time of 4:00:48 in his 50km debut. In 2008 he was qualified to walk the Olympics with an IAAF “B” standard but was denied a spot by the Swedish Olympic Committee. In 2009 Andreas headed to the World Athletics Championships with the slowest qualifying time but ended up getting 20th in a 3 minute personal best of 3:57:53 out of 47 qualified. His best international accomplishment might have came in Barcelona the next year were he placed 12th at the European Championships in Athletics in a time of 3:58:02 after a head to head battle against Colin Griffin from Ireland who ended up beating him by 4 seconds in the final kilometer. At the 2011 World Athletics Championships in Daegu he placed 21st. Andreas was qualified for the 2012 Olympic Games in London by a large margin walking 3:54:08 in Congers, New York but was rejected a spot by the Swedish Olympic Committee once again who as a rule only send athletes with a capability of place at least 8th. He ended the season with a life time personal best in 3:50:47 in Valley Cottage, New York. In 2013, Andreas placed 5th at the highly competitive 20 kilometer race in Podebrady, Czech Republic in a career best of 1:21:51 and was then qualified for both the 20 kilometer and 50 kilometer walk at the World Athletics Championships in Moscow. He ended up getting 39th in the 50 kilometer race in a time of 4:01:40. In 2014 Andreas won the prestigious Millrose Games beating defending World Champion, Robert Heffernan from Ireland in a time of 5:34:45 missing the World Record by only 8 tenths of a second. In January of 2019, Andreas transferred Allegiance to the United States which he currently competes for. On January 25th of 2020, Andreas won the U.S.A Olympic Track & Field Trials in the 50km Walk in a time of 4 hours, 12 minutes and 11 seconds. He won the race by over 2 and a half minutes.
Achievements
Personal records
Doping case
In March 2015 Gustafsson was provisionally suspended from sports after a sample from December 2014 had been found positive for a prohibited substance. Gustafsson waived the right to have the B sample tested. On 6 March 2015 the Swedish Sports Confederation announced that they had banned him for two years for testing positive for EPO.
Personal life
Gustafsson was born in Gothenburg, Sweden. When he was 15 years old he moved to Huntington Beach CA after his mother married an American. He ran Track for Mission Viejo High School. He went to School at Utah Valley University and Brigham University graduating with a degree in aviation. He is a commercial pilot. He is married to his wife Molly and has two boys, Dylan Henning and Elijah David. His father and life-long coach, Bo Gustafsson was an Olympic Silver Medalist in 1984 in the 50 kilometer walk.
