This has been a long haul, but it has also been a lot of fun.
Nearly six months - 150 publishing days - after we profiled the first of our 150 Greatest Moments in Otago Sport, we get to unveil No 1.
It brings to an end a remarkable project of which the Otago Daily Times is immensely proud, and which I doubt has been matched in scale or scope by any other newspaper in this country.
An incredible amount of planning, research and writing has gone into the series, and the result is an exhaustive record of the history of Otago sport.
When I first had the idea in March, trying to think of some way the sports department could play its part in marking 150 years of this newspaper, I instantly shook my head.
It seemed too ambitious, even slightly ridiculous.
Would there even be 150 great Otago sporting moments to profile?
And how to compare moments when sports, not to mention eras, are so vastly different?
The first question was quickly answered. Yes, easily. In fact, we ended up with a shortlist of more than 200 moments. Some, which just missed the cut, will appear in our Summer Times editions.
The second question was always going to be trickier to settle, when you are not just comparing apples with oranges, but with watermelons and grapes and strawberries.
It boiled down, on a consensus vote among our sports department and a couple of guest judges, to the scale of the achievement, the impact the moment had, its news value, and that hard-to-describe "special something".
Our criteria was simple: if it happened to an Otago person, or happened in Otago, it could be considered for our series. We bent our rules a couple of times to include people - Russell Coutts was one example - who were produced by Otago, if not necessarily resident in the province when their moment was achieved.
We started by throwing every great Otago sporting moment we could think of on to a list, then scouring files and books, and tapping into prominent memory banks, to find more.
Our panel was asked to rank moments worthy of being in the top 20, and then the top 50. Then, after some more discussion and lots of juggling, a top 150 was found, and we started writing.
It wasn't a science, obviously. The early moments - No 150 right through to the 70s or 60s - were not strictly ranked, for example. But I think we ended up with a particularly strong top 25-30, forming an accurate picture of the greatest moments in Otago sport.
We also featured no fewer than 29 sports. As expected, rugby and cricket dominated the list, but not to the extent that we can be accused of bias. There were 30 rugby moments and 25 cricket moments, and I think 55 out of 150 (nearly 37%) is a fair reflection of the status, history and impact of our major codes.
Other sports were represented as follows: 14 athletics, 7 swimming, 6 netball, 6 basketball, 6 golf, 5 cycling, 5 football, 5 racing, 4 general, 4 bowls, 4 paraplegic sport, 3 motorsport, 3 rowing, 3 winter sport, 2 yachting, 2 hockey, 2 tennis, 2 table tennis, 2 boxing, 2 surf life-saving, 1 croquet, 1 badminton, 1 roller skating, 1 rugby league, 1 shearing, 1 squash, 1 cue sports, 1 archery.
The most prolific decades highlighted in the series were the 1990s (31), the 1980s (20) and the 1970s (17), understandable given the increase in competitive codes and the greater opportunities to shine. Forty-seven of the moments were pre-1960, so I'm satisfied the series was not too skewed towards the modern era.
We've profiled great players, teams and coaches: Danyon Loader, Yvette Williams, Alison Shanks, Hamish Bond, Bert Sutcliffe, the 1998 Otago rugby and netball teams, Duncan Laing, Vic Cavanagh and Lois Muir.
But there have also been plenty on lesser-known figures, such as Lance Napper, Bob Blair, Sybill Lupp, Nick Ryan and Merv Richards, whose stories deserved to be told.
Finding a photo to accompany every moment was a mammoth task, but through a combination of ODT files, the Otago Witness, the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame and the odd dusty scrapbook, we got there.
Sports reporters Alistair McMurran, Adrian Seconi and Steve Hepburn, and sub-editors Tony Love, Andrew Morrison, Jane Davidson, Rory Hewson and Peter Donaldson, all contributed to the series.
Brent Edwards, the elder statesman of Otago sports journalism, was, as always, an immense help, and Ben Guild, David Thomson and Winston Cooper chipped in with stories.
Special thanks also to Ron Palenski, Joseph Romanos, Steve Davie, Paul Allison, Ross Dykes, Martin Balch and Carey Clements for their input.
