THROUGH TRAGEDY OR TRIUMPH, LAMPLEY'S DELIVERY REMAINS CLASSY.

Byline: Tom Hoffarth

An upbeat Jim Lampley entered the NBC Broadcast Center early Sunday evening, several hours before he'd be on the air to co-host late-night Olympic coverage.

No anxiety? Fear? Resentment? Despair? Not even cranky from a lack of sleep maybe?

His mood probably reflected most around him.

``As usual, there's an incredibly ironic mixture of all things good and bad,'' he said. ``I have tears of joy, anger; pathos and bitterness. Which happens at every Games.''

Friday night's experience - having to anchor NBC's coverage of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta moments after it happened - doesn't fit into some neat emotional category to file away and reminiscent about years from now.

True, the story fell into Lampley's lap, since he and Hannah Storm were on the air when it happened. Soon, NBC News stalwart Tom Brokaw came in and took over the all-night coverage - which Lampley understands.

Doesn't mean it initially was in distrusted hands.

Lampley, emersed in Olympic network sports coverage for about 20 years, spent 3-1/2 years a news anchor at KCBS Channel 2. He was anything but one of those ego-maniacal screamers who now dominate the local news landscape.

Lampley is one to trust.

At about 10:30 (PDT) Friday night, in the NBC Broadcasting Center control booth to watch tape of an interview he did with swimmer Gary Hall Jr., Lampley was interrupted by his 16-year-old daughter, Brooke.

She pointed at the CNN coverage on the control panel. The scene was of chaos and panic. And the graphic said ``Atlanta.''

In L.A., Lampley had been handcuffed with his share of movie-star arrests, live police chases and killer-bee scares. But he'd anchored coverage of fires, earthquakes and floods; hostage situations, bank holdups and plane crashes.

He's disaster-ready. But this was indeed a new one.

``You follow the same procedures,'' Lampley said. ``You start with what few facts there are, careful to attribute every fact, avoid assumption and speculation, and not push too far, being careful to share 50-50 with the co-anchor.''

Lampley's Olympic memories include seeing Franz Klammer's gold medal downhill run in '76 at Innsbruck, reporting on Bruce Jenner's decathlon gold in '76 at Montreal. At Lake Placid in '80, he did a live interviews with Mike Eruzione and Jim Craig after the ``Miracle On Ice.'' He's co-hosted late-night coverage from Sarajevo and L.A. in '84, attended the '92 Winter and Summer Games as a reporter.

In Atlanta, Lampley likely will be reminded again that being away from home - and wife Bree Walker and their two children - isn't always so glamorous.

Lampley says he has been to his Hollywood Hills home just once in the last six weeks, covering Wimbledon for HBO, followed by a ``Real Sports'' assignment and that insane Riddick Bowe-Andrew Golota fight at Madison Square Garden earlier this month.

These kind of events, he admits, ``makes me miss Bree all the more intensely.''

As a dad, he also fears they give his daughter a warped idea of what sports are all about.

``I was very sad she had seen that; it really hurt me,'' Lampley said about the Bowe-Golota violent aftermath.

``I've always said to her that the Olympics are something more than a sports event. It's a socio-political event to some degree. No gathering is immune to it.''

Nor is any sports-turned-news anchor, which more and more these days is just part of the job.

Setting the tone: It bears repeating that NBC Sports President Dick Ebersol sent a directive to all NBC producers, directors and talent Saturday for that day's coverage - do a very business-like show, don't use humor. The recognizable ``Bugler's Theme'' music was replaced with softer music, on-air people wore dark blazers.

Chris Marlowe revealed Sunday that a piece they had ready to air during the U.S.-Brazil men's indoor volleyball match that went back to four years ago when the U.S. team shaved its heads in support of Bob Samuelsen had to be shelved.

``It's disappointing, but very understandable,'' said Marlowe, after Sunday's beach volleyball gold-medal match received about two hours of mid-day airtime.

Saturday, Marlowe said it was very difficult to broadcast since a lot of his terminology includes phrases like ``bombs down the line'' or ``explodes in the sand.''

``I really had to be careful,'' he said. ``It was a serious situation.''

MEMO: Staff Writer Tom Hoffarth's media column appears daily during the Olympics. His e-mail address is sptmediaaol.com.

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Photo: (color) LAMPLEY