Austin Hack was in Aiguebelette, France, representing the United States of America. The lake on which he had just rowed was colored a vivid aqua, seemingly no more splendid a view anywhere in the world.

Only Hack couldn’t enjoy it.

The U.S. men’s eight, including Old Lyme’s Hack, finished seventh in the 2015 World Rowing Championships on Sept. 6 in France. Only the top five teams from that event, led by gold medalist Great Britain, were automatically qualified for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

“From the day we failed to qualify it was, like, depressing,” Hack said. “We’re in this beautiful town in France and we already know we didn’t get the job done. It was a really somber mood. Everybody basically knew what was on the table. It was stressful. We knew we would have to go through this qualifier race.

“I woke up plenty of times the past year, woke up in the middle of the night and had trouble sleeping.”

But Hack, 24, is still going to Rio.

The U.S. eight, with the 6-foot-8 Hack in the stroke seat, came back to win the European Continental and Final Olympic Qualification Regatta on May 24 in Lucerne, Switzerland. At stake were the last two Olympic berths. Less than a second separated the top three boats, with the U.S. (5 minutes, 29.160 seconds over 2,000 meters) and Poland (5:29.620) advancing. The final outcome was unclear for several agonizing heartbeats.

“It was probably one of the single most exciting moments of our lives,” said Hack’s mother, Barbara, who traveled to the race along with her husband Greg to see their son row. “There’s one picture where you see the tension in all of our faces; people are looking down and you can see our faces are contorted. The boats were bunched so closely together. When we found out they won, we burst into tears.”

Olympic competition in the men's eight begins Aug. 8 at Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas in the heart of Rio. Hack heads for Brazil on July 29.

“You see commentators on TV say, ‘She didn’t make it, but she’s young. She’ll have another shot,”’ Barbara Hack said of what it means to gain an Olympic berth, “not knowing what a heartbreak it is for anybody who isn’t able to realize their dream.”

••••

What transpired from Sept. 6 in France to May 24 in Switzerland?

Hack lost sleep, sure, but also drew on the leadership experience he gleaned while rowing for Stanford University and renowned coach Craig Amerkhanian to help serve the U.S. team during its training sessions in Chula Vista, Calif., and currently in Princeton, N.J.

Hack, a 2010 graduate of Old Lyme High School, graduated in 2014 from Stanford, where he was 2013 and 2014 Pac-12 Men’s Rower of the Year and a two-time Intercollegiate Rowing Association Academic All-American.

“We started off with four guys that hadn’t been on the team before, so there was a deeper pool,” Hack said of the days following the World Championships. “That ratcheted it up even more. If someone didn’t have a good day of practice … you couldn’t afford many swings and misses.”

Hack said there were moments the athletes had rowers-only meetings without the coaches to help solve potential differences of opinion and remain on course.

“It's a matter of give and take from everybody, everybody coming together,” Hack said. “… You can't guarantee you are going to be perfect (when the final qualifier comes). You have to make it so your decent race, your average race, is better than other people's great races. We had to put together a boat that could achieve that.”

Hack said he began learning at Stanford how to get the best out of himself and his teammates.

Amerkhanian, who won two national championships as an assistant coach at Cal before taking over as Stanford head coach prior to the 2000-01 season, contests that Hack arrived on the West Coast already wired for success.

Amerkhanian calls Hack, one of six Olympians during his tenure, “exceptional.”

“It's about team,” said Amerkhanian, who calls himself an athletes' coach, not wanting to paint himself into one sport (he lists UCLA great John Wooden in men's basketball and Ara Parseghian of Notre Dame football fame among his coaching inspirations). “If it's not about team, you're not going to realize the essence of your potential.

“Austin is a son of New England. He learned by watching the professional teams growing up how he fits in his sport. He's just really very smart, very in tune to how he can make those around him better. That's what (New England Patriots quarterback) Tom Brady does. That's what Dennis Johnson (former Boston Celtics point guard) did when I was a kid watching the Celtics beat the Lakers.

“(Hack) has an incredible and fierce drive. He's also a really humble, selfless, talented, smart man. That's rare to put all those qualities together.”

••••

Hack, whose Boston sports roots included being a Red Sox fan following a particularly painful loss to the New York Yankees in the 2003 American League Championship Series — the 11-year-old Hack attempted to get his parents to let him stay home from school — first tried rowing in middle school, introducing himself to a sport in which both his parents competed in college.

Hack was noticeably better than the other kids in the Rogers Lake “Learn-to-Row” summer session being offered by the Old Lyme Rowing Association.

“You would see the new middle schoolers out there holding oars for the first time,” Barbara Hack said. “It was pretty clear he was talented. He was so much taller, so much bigger than the other kids his age. He rowed at a higher level. They recognized right away he had a lot of potential.”

In eighth grade, already 6-foot-5 and competing for Old Lyme's Blood Street Sculls rowing club, Hack was given a spot on the Old Lyme High School team for the fall season.

He went on to compete for the U.S. Junior National team from 2009-10, where he won a gold medal with the eight at the 2010 World Rowing Junior Championships in the Czech Republic.

From there, he spent two years with the U.S. Under-23 team; he won gold with the eight in 2011 and finished fourth in the pair in the 2012 U-23 World Championships.

Hack has been a member of the U.S. Senior National Team since 2013, winning his first gold medal with that group at the 2013 Samsung World Rowing Cup No. 3, also in Lucerne.

Meanwhile, there was his career at Stanford, where he majored in political science and minored in modern languages (he can speak German and Arabic). Both Hack's parents were Ivy Leaguers, Barbara at Dartmouth and Greg at Brown, but Austin found something special on the West Coast.

“I went out on my official visit. I fell in love,” said Hack, who has two younger sisters, Amalia, 22, and Olivia, 20. “Just the way the students conducted themselves in the classroom. The kids were really, really smart and they weren't show-off about it.

“… I can't really remember when I was in high school if I was ever dreaming of going to the Olympics. It was a little too far out of reach at the time. In high school, I wanted to make the Junior National team. Then I wanted to win junior worlds. Then make the U-23 team. It kind of progressed. … Then I wanted to make the Olympics and win a medal.”

••••

Hack describes a typical day this summer in Princeton, N.J., where the U.S. men's and women's national teams make their home at Princeton University. He wakes up at 5:50 a.m. and, before the 24 hours ends, he will have rowed 22 miles.

“It's some of the most intense training of our lives, if not the most intense,” Hack said. “What I don't do is stay awake past 9 p.m.”

Practice starts at 7 a.m. Prior to that, Hack eats breakfast: Grape-Nuts cereal, a fat scoop of peanut butter, fresh blueberries and a liter of water. He heads to the boathouse around 6:25, gets dressed for the workout and warms up.

After the morning row, about 11 miles, the athletes have breakfast provided by a local restaurant, generally bagel sandwiches and a giant fruit salad. Hack takes a shower and heads back to the apartment he shares with two teammates to try to catch a nap.

After lunch, he travels the 3-4 minutes back to the training facility for a second practice at 2 p.m., where the team covers another 11 miles.

“Some days are better than others,” said Hack of the toll rowing that number of miles takes. “Your body definitely gets used to it. It’s getting warmer and more humid; that definitely takes it out of you more.”

In past years, Hack lived with a host family in Princeton. Karoline and Randy Borup, in fact, have hosted three members of the Olympic eight.

Hack describes Randy Borup as “one of the most prolific chefs I've ever had the pleasure of being with.” The Borups still invite their former house guests for occasional over-the-top national team barbeques and Karoline Borup calls Hack an inspiration to the couple's son Kevin, who will row at Columbia this fall.

“We've become very good friends with the Hacks,” Karoline Borup said. “Boys are a little different; they don't always communicate as well. I'll text his mom and I'll get a text from her. She keeps me informed, as well. … I have to pinch myself. Do I really know all these guys going to the Olympics?”

The Olympic eight, in which Hack will row in Rio, consists of coxswain Sam Ojserkis (University of Washington), Hack at stroke, Robb Munn (Washington), Mike DiSanto (Harvard), Steve Kasprzyk (Drexel), Glenn Ochal (Princeton), Alex Karwoski (Cornell), Hans Struzyna (Washington) and Sam Dommer (Washington). The head men's Olympic coach is Luke McGee.

Hack said he's aware of athletes from other sports who have elected not to compete in the Games because of health concerns in Rio. To him, “there is no stage that comes close” to the Olympics.

“It was incredible,” Hack said of qualifying. “I was just thinking about it. You kind of dream for years and years and years for this moment when you're going to achieve such a lifelong dream. It was unbelievable and I'm trying to think of the right word here. It took a while to set in.”

Barbara and Greg Hack, their daughters and several other family members will make the trip to Brazil to watch Austin race. To them, he's just a regular guy who enjoys a lobster roll from Captain Scott's Lobster Dock in New London when he's home.

“When you think of Olympians, you have this larger-than-life idea of what the person must be like … that an Olympian must be somebody walking on water,” Barbara Hack said. “He's just an awesome kid. He's so likeable. He's so down to earth. We just know him as Austin, the kid that everybody likes.

“This is a dream come true for him.”

v.fulkerson@theday.com