Andreas Low

0 Andreas Low
Andreas Niederig (left) at the premiere of " Traumwärts " (November 2013 in Bochum)
Personal information
Date of birth	12th October 1967 (age 52)
place of birth	Recklinghausen , Germany
societies
successes
1998-2015	5 × Third Ironman
2001, 2002	2 × Second Ironman
2001	7th Ironman Hawaii
status
active

Andreas Niederig (born October 12, 1967 in Recklinghausen ) is a German triathlete . He is included in the best list of German triathletes on the Ironman distance .

Career

Andreas Niederig attended secondary school up to sixth grade and then secondary school in Oer-Erkenschwick . After finishing secondary school with the 9th grade, an apprenticeship as an electrician began, which he broke off after four months. When he was 12, he smoked his first joint , followed by speed, cocaine and finally heroin. He applied as a temporary soldier in the Bundeswehr and attended the Bundeswehr technical school in Cologne, which he left after a year. Then he took a job as a truck driver . With the successful end of his second drug therapy , he completed vocational training as an orthopedic mechanic .

Triathlon since 1993

After his discharge from the therapy clinic in Bad Fredeburg in February 1993, Andreas low - motivated by his father who worked for the police - started jogging and three months later he ran his first marathon in 2:43 hours. In October 1993 he took part in a triathlon in Selm for a friend who was ill with borrowed equipment and came in surprisingly ninth in a field in which West Germany's top was represented.

After a few starts for his team “Tailwind Geckos Dortmund” in the North Rhine-Westphalian “Crown League”, Andreas Niederig was nominated for the German national team at the European Championships in Hungary in 1996. In 1997 he was seventh at the World Long Distance Championships as part of the Triathlon International de Nice .

For his first Ironman five weeks later in Roth , the organizer Detlef Kühnel had not accepted the target time of 8:20 h, which was still largely unknown in the scene, from the target time of 8:20 h and initially intended to put him in the second starting group. Ultimately, Andreas Niederig and last year's Ironman Hawaii winner , Luc van Lierde , were the first to get out of the water with a new course record and were alone in the lead for the first 40 km on the bike course. In 8:06:58 h he finished fifth, before this race only three German triathletes had been faster over the Ironman distance. Andreas Low was later three times third (1998, 1999 and 2000) and once second (2001) at Ironman Europe , his best placement at Ironman Hawaii was seventh in 2001.

Low described his previous drug addiction in 2000 in the book From Junkie to Ironman . The book was filmed in 2008 under the title Run for Your Life - From Junkie to Ironman with Max Riemelt in the leading role.

In 2010, he took part in a team of four together with Florian Lechner in the Race Across America (RAAM) cycle race : "Team Arndt" came in eighth in the race across the USA over 4835 km. It took the team 6 days, 23 hours and 56 minutes.

Premiere interview “Traumwärts” with WDR (November 2013)

The official German premiere of his film Traumwärts , a documentary about the Race Across America, took place in Bochum on November 6, 2013 . In 2011, a team he was in charge of took part in this race. Andreas Niederig himself had planned the start as a single driver, but had to forego his start due to an injury and hand over the starting position to his team.

In August 2015, the then 48-year-old finished third at Ironman Copenhagen after being in the lead up to km 22 on the final marathon distance. In August 2016 he took part in an Ironman race at the Ironman Vichy for the last time and finished in 26th place.

Private

He has been married since November 11, 1988, has two children and lives with his family in Oer-Erkenschwick.
Andreas Low is a younger brother of Cornelia Low (* 1964), the leading actress in the Sat.1 production Low and Kuhnt - Detecting Commissioners . In one episode of this series, Andreas low took on a supporting role.

Since 2000 he has been working as a speaker and coach at schools, universities and companies and gives seminars on the subject of motivation. Low now also works as a motivational coach for a large German health insurance company.

His son Lorenz low is also active as a track and field athlete and started at the age of 19 at the 2017 European U20 Athletics Championships in Italy.

Sporting successes

Movies

• Run for Your Life - From Junkie to Ironman in the Internet Movie Database (2008)
• Traumwärts - Where is your path in the Internet Movie Database (English) (2012)

literature

• Jörg Schmitt-Kilian: From Junkie to Ironman . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 978-3-453-64034-4 (revised and updated version 2007)
• Motivation compact . AZ Sport Media, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-939978-05-3

Web links

Commons : Andreas Niederig  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of Andreas Niederig
• Profile and results of Andreas Niederig in the ITU database at Triathlon.org , accessed on September 24, 2018 (English).
• Literature by and about Andreas Niederig in the catalog of the German National Library
• Profile for Andreas Niederig at the Institute for Applied Training Science , accessed on October 12, 2014
• Homepage of Andreas Niederig at TK
• Documentary project Traumwärts
• Matthias Geyer: The Iron Man's Scar . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 2000 ( online - on the addiction problem by Andreas Niederig).
• Steffen Gerth: Sportsman film "Run for your life": Harder than heroin. In: Spiegel Online . April 21, 2008, accessed October 12, 2014 . 
• Sporting successes of Andreas Niederig

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "If you have no goal, you get lost in life" . Bild-Zeitung, June 1, 2007
2. ↑ ^{a b} The Scar of the Iron Man . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 2000 ( online ).
3. ↑ Ex-junkie Andreas low: we never had the feeling of doing anything wrong In: Badische Zeitung of March 17th, 2011
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Keep Smiling . In: Triathlete . No. 108 , September 1997, OCLC 724506582 , p. 23 .
5. ↑ Andreas low on "Top-Stars". ( Memento from February 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Website of TVG Buschhütten; accessed on October 12, 2014
6. ↑ Page to the film "Run for Your Life - From Junkie to Ironman" . Archived from the original on May 17, 2008.
7. ↑ Page of the production company for the film "Run for Your Life - From Junkie to Ironman" ( Memento of the original from December 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ From Junkie to IRONMAN, the life story of Andreas Niederig in cinemas from autumn 2008 ( Memento from May 25, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on October 12, 2014
9. ↑ Interview with Andreas Niederig on business-on.de/suedbaden in March 2011
10. ↑ Techniker Krankenkasse - motivational coach Andreas low
11. ↑ Lorenz low appointed to the DLV-C squad
12. ↑ DLV with 80 young athletes to the U20 European Championship in Italy (July 5, 2017)
13. ↑ Triathlon Essen results list MW
14. ↑ Virtual certificate. (PDF, 714 kB) 6th Stadtwerke Ratingen Triathlon, September 14, 2014, accessed on October 12, 2014 ( results list search form ). 
15. ↑ Andreas Niederig wins 5th wind sports ISLANDMAN - Norderney Triathlon (June 29, 2014)
16. ↑ Knoepke runs Sieger low into the arms
17. ↑ http://ap.ironman.com/triathlon/events/emea/ironman/barcelona/results.aspx?race=barcelona&rd=20181007&y=2018&q=niedrig#axzz5V9lioLs6
18. ^ Ironman South Africa Results . Archived from the original on May 17, 2008.