NEWS FROM NAGANO: A DAILY DOSE OF OLYMPIC HEADLINES : LIPINSKI SAYS CELEBRATION `ALMOST INDESCRIBABLE'.

Byline: Daily News Wire Services

Tara Lipinski's smile was as bright as the Olympic flame.

As a 5-year-old, the American figure skating star imagined herself at an Olympic opening ceremony. Saturday, the 15-year-old world champion got the experience of her life.

``It was almost indescribable,'' she said. ``I've never been in anything like it, ever. I'm feeling so high, I almost feel like I'm not competing, I'm having so much fun.

``I had so many thoughts going through my mind, thinking how it would be, and this was finally it.''

Lipinski, the only member of the U.S. women's team on hand - Michelle Kwan and Nicole Bobek are in California and not expected until late next week - marched in the middle of the U.S. team as it entered the stadium. She waved to the crowd and joked with training partner-mentor Todd Eldredge, the five-time U.S. men's champion.

Most of all, she soaked it in.

``Walking in was the best part,'' she said, ``when we came out of the tunnel and they said your country was the best.''

Lipinski left today for Osaka, where U.S. figure skating officials set up a training base for the three women. Initially, she wasn't happy with the idea, but she relented because ``it's only for a few days, and then I'll come back to everything.''

Live, tape ... it didn't matter

Live coverage to half the U.S. of the opening ceremony at the Olympics didn't help CBS' rating Friday night.

CBS got a 17.0 rating and a 28 share for its first-ever live prime-time coverage of the ceremony, according to a fast national rating released by the network Saturday. That is 18.7 percent lower than the 20.9 rating CBS got at Lillehammer in 1994, but 17.2 percent higher than from Albertville in 1992.

Both of those ceremonies were shown on taped delay on Saturday nights, traditionally the lowest-rated night of television.

Friday's ceremony was tape-delayed to the Pacific and Mountain Time Zones, as will be the entire Games coverage.

A rating point represents 980,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's estimated 98 million TV homes. Share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.

Report: Princess Diana would have carried torch

Princess Diana had been expected to help carry the Olympic torch and perhaps appeal for world peace in a speech at the Nagano Games' opening ceremony, a news report said.

Diana's death Aug. 31 in a Paris car crash came in the midst of discussions about her participation in the games, Kyodo News reported.

Talks about inviting Diana began in March, Kyodo said, and the Nagano Olympic Organizing Committee contacted her through a Japanese organization concerned with refugees.

In July, officials received a letter from her secretary saying that she would like to go and asking what activities she would participate in.

Officials had wanted her to be a torch carrier and possibly give a speech. She apparently was willing to do both, Kyodo said.

Diana in the last years of her life had been a strong and visible proponent of banning land mines. Chris Moon, the land-mine victim who brought the torch into the Olympic Stadium on Saturday for the opening ceremony, was a friend of the princess.

It's just a ho-hum event now

It may have been one of the most popular events in Lillehammer four years ago, but cross-country skiing at the Nagano Olympics isn't a hit with the Japanese.

More than half the tickets to the events at the Snow Harp venue in Hakuba were unsold ahead of today's opening race, the women's 15-kilometer classical race.