The tireless Peter Galambos

This year has been Galambos's most successful season since appearing on the international stage in 2005 as an under-23 athlete. Racing in the lightweight men’s single sculls he has collected silver at the 2012 Samsung World Rowing Cups in Belgrade and Munich, silver at the World Rowing Senior Championships in Plovdiv and secured top honours in Kazan: a gold medal at the 2012 World University Rowing Championships.

As well as winning three national championship titles at home in Hungary, Galambos also made the final of the openweight men’s single sculls at the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta – an achievement the 26-year-old takes great encouragement from. For any athlete, such achievements sound like a good season’s work, but they’re not enough for Galambos. He will challenge himself to add another medal to his collection at the European Rowing Championships in Varese, Italy, which run from 14 to 16 September 2012.

Galambos has two major focuses in his life: his rowing and his studies. He is a third year student of economics and management at Budapest’s University of Obuda. Galambos describes his daily routine as being based around rowing, studying and sleeping. As his university does not have a rowing club of its own, he rows in the same club he started rowing in during the autumn of 2000 and commutes to study from his hometown of Vác each day. Galambos makes use of every minute the day gives him. Whilst others may look out the window on a train journey he dedicates the time to his studies. “I’m only at home to sleep!” he laughs.

“Time management!” – this age old skill is quite simply what Galambos says makes him able to successfully balance his studies and rowing. Would life would be more simple with just one focus? Galambos doesn’t think so. Like so many rowers, he thrives on pushing himself further in order to live up to the high expectations he sets himself.

“In the past I have spent some time just focusing on my training but it wasn’t fulfilling enough – it was just training, training all the time,” he explains. He prefers how he now has both physical and mental stimulation to keep him motivated. “In the summer I like that I only have to train, so I enjoy it more!”

So what does the future hold for this Hungarian sensation? Once he finishes competing at the European Rowing Championships, it’s back to the books for Galambos and he says that he will be taking some time away from rowing. Thinking beyond his season has not been on his mind to date but now as racing draws to a close he will start to think about his plans for the next Olympic cycle, for which his goal will be to qualify the lightweight men’s double sculls for the 2016 Games.