You can do laps around the oval until you're dizzy. You can take a wild ride down the bobsled run, wedged between a professional driver and a brakeman who know their way through the Labyrinth curve.
You can ski down the same mountain that the Austrians did, and kick-and-glide along the same cross-country trails as the Norwegians. You can learn to ski-and-shoot like a German biathlete. And you can take an elevator to the top of the ski jump, from where you can see halfway to Vermont.
If you don't want to put your skeletal structure at risk, you can get a virtual sample at the Olympic Sports Complex at Mount Van Hoevenberg and the Olympic Center in the village, where simulators create a real-life taste of five events.
The Olympics have grown so big these days that they may never return to this hideaway of 2,600 people, which encompasses only 1 1/2 square miles, including water. But that is part of Placid's unchanging charm.
Unlike resorts in Colorado and Utah that have been engulfed by boom and sprawl, the village has retained much of the scale and style it had in 1932, when the Lords of the Rings brought their snow-and-ice carnival here for the first time.
There's still only one main street (called Main Street) and three traffic lights - three times as many as there were when Mike Eruzione took his shot heard 'round the world against the Soviets. There's a throwback movie theater (the Palace), bookstores, a wine store, a tobacconist, ski shops, and restaurants that serve carbo-packed breakfasts meant for those who'll be exercising outdoors until dusk.
That was the idea a century ago, when tycoons like J.P. Morgan and Alfred Vanderbilt realized that Lake Placid was a wonderful place for them and their wealthy playmates to "rough it," and built their Great Camps here.
Such was the pitch when the residents bid for the 1932 Olympics, inviting the world to a place "up where the mountains meet the sky and the deep, white snows of winter say to young and old, 'Come up and play!' "
