In the only major tournament outing of his international career, he won the gold medal at the 1938 European Athletics Championships in Paris in a near-personal best of . His win at the second edition of this competition marked the beginning of a period of Swedish dominance in that event, with Anton Bolinder, Bengt Nilsson and Rickard Dahl maintaining the European title for Sweden at four of the following five editions. Lundqvist was also Sweden's first ever European champion in a jumping event and the second Swedish European field medallist after Harald Andersson.