Former New Canaan resident Charlie Cole and his fellow rowers have reportedly advanced to the semifinals in Men's Four rowing at the 2012 Olympics.
According to a report on NBC Connecticut, Cole, 26, a graduate of , and his team "had a great morning" on Monday, finishing first in their Men’s Four preliminary heat.
Cole and his teammates — Scott Gault (Piedmont, Calif.), Henrik Rummel (Pittsford, N.Y.) and Glenn Ochal (Philadelphia) — will next move on to the Men's Four rowing semifinals, scheduled for 5:10 a.m. Thursday. The finals are scheduled for 5:30 a.m. Saturday.
Cole reportedly got his start in rowing at Norwalk's Maritime Rowing Club during his freshman year at NCHS in 1999.
"Rowing in New Canaan was just starting then, so the program wasn't very developed, but I thought I would try it out," Cole said in a recent report in the CT Post. "It took a long time before I realized I could be decent."
But Cole said he kept at it because "the coaches were encouraging and because I was seeing a lot of incremental progress."
"I wasn't great when I started, and it was that way for a while," he told the CT Post. "The program grew up while I was there and that energy made it fun to come down to the boathouse."
For more check out the report on NBC Connecticut.
