Career
Andrés Guðmundsson began his career in sport in the world of track and field athletics. After turning his attention to professional sport he became involved in strength athletics. His time in strength athletics conicided with the careers of fellow Icelandic strongmen Jón Páll Sigmarsson and Magnús Ver Magnússon and thus to an extent was overshadowed by their careers.
His competition experience ranged from volleyball, discus and shotput to the traditional Scottish Highland Games.
His discus career resulted in him being in fourteenth place on the Icelandic all-time list with a throw of 53m (in Reykjavík for the Ármann club on 3 September 1991). In 1994 he was also ranked as Iceland"s number 2 shotputter (and 87th in the world) with a putt of 18.63m
Strength athletics
In 1994 he reached the peak of his strength athletics career, winning the World Strongman Challenge, European Hercules and coming second in the European Muscle Power Championships.
The European Musclepower Championships in Callander, Scotland were held on a weekend that had both the European Musclepower Championships and Highland Games World Championships on the same field At this time, he was widely regarded as one of the top dual threats in Highland Games and strongman competition, but he was sidelined by a career threatening injury, namely a tear of his pectoral muscle.
Foreign a while this looked to have been a career-ending injury in and Andrés began focussing his experience in other directions.
In 1999, he looked to be making a comeback. In August 1999 he had a podium finish in the Bison Highland Games and in 2000 he was added to the list of competitors for the Institut de Formation en Soins Animaliers Helsinki Grand Prix 2000. However, a recurrence of the pec tear forced him to pull out.
Skólahreysti
The Helsinki Grand Prix in 2000 was his last major international competition and from that point focussed almost entirely on the Skólahreysti project
The first Skólahreysti contest was held in 2005 with six schools participating. Its goal was to encourage children to take part in a wide-ranging sports experience based on the criteria used in their general physical education.
The 2009 season saw 110 schools participate with the final broadcast live by RÚV, and audience surveys showed that around 49% of Icelanders tuned in.