Sydney Terpering competes in Sunday’s 1,000-meter speedskating race at Lake Placid’s Olympic Speedskating Oval during the Winter World University Games. (Enterprise photo — Peter Crowley)

LAKE PLACID — Sydney Terpening remembers daydreaming in class at Lake Placid High School, longingly gazing out the windows at the Olympic Speedskating Oval. Her training site was right there in her school’s front yard.

And there she was again Sunday, representing the USA in that same front yard at the Winter World University Games’ first speedskating race, the 1,000 meter.

Now 22, Terpening grew up in Oswego but did her freshman and sophomore years here in the mid-2010s while training with coach Tom Miller’s Adirondack Speedskating Club.

“I’d say it was the most formative time of my life,” she said Sunday. “Going to high school here was really special. Just being able to just look out the window and see the oval and just the town — if your class was on the top floor, being able to see the ski jumps.”

She had visited Lake Placid many times as a kid, when she played hockey. When she met Miller she was a short-track speedskater, but he convinced her to switch to long-track for the Empire State Winter Games, held here every year. She eventually committed to long-track and moved here as a young teenager.

Lake Placid is also where she made her first junior world team in 2019. This is her first time back here since then, and she’s psyched. She’s dragged teammates to some of her favorite places, like Big Mountain Deli and Creperie. The crepes are a staple, she said.

“So much has changed for the games, but also not a lot has changed, if that makes sense,” she said. “It’s very nostalgic for me, just walking through the town and seeing people I went to school with or just people I used to train with or just locals I know.”

Sunday morning’s race-day conditions were gorgeous — blue sky, sun, temperatures in the 20s and a decent-sized crowd of spectators — but Terpering had a tough time out there. She finished 34th out of 35, nearly 10 seconds behind winner Minsun Kim of South Korea, who finished the two-and-a-half-lap course in 1 minute and 20.46 seconds — a new track record for women. The previous record was broken by the first racer of the day, Iga Wojtasik of Poland (1:21.78), but Kim smashed that by more than a second in the final heat, bumping Wojtasik to the silver medal spot on the podium. Chaeeun Park of South Korea placed third in 1:21.85.

Terpering’s three American teammates were also way off the podium. Anna Quinn placed 20th, Libby Williams 32nd and Ilsa Shobe 35th of 35.

Terpering said she felt OK despite her result.

“I fractured my ankle in September, so I’m just sort of getting back into shape and getting race-ready, pretty much,” she said. “This is my big event for the year,” and her goal is “just being able to come back to Placid and just have fun with it and take each race as it comes.”

Pushing through pain is one of the things she loves best about skating, surprising as that may seem.

“It’s such a weird answer, but just being able to push your limits as far as you can go, it’s really fulfilling,” she said.

She has four more races this week: the 3,000-meter Monday, 1,500-meter Tuesday, 500-meter Thursday and mass start Friday.

“I’ll have plenty of time to ramp it up and get going,” she said.

In the men’s 1,000-meter race Sunday, Kazuya Yamada of Japan won in 1:12.38, followed by Taiyo Nonomura of Japan (1:12.50) and David La Rue of Canada (1:12.57). There were two Americans: William Gebauer placed 12th, and Thomas Fitzgerald placed 20th.