It was also the last year that Hamish Peacock did not win the javelin event at the Tasmanian athletics championships.

For the next 15 years (and counting), the Eastern Suburbs thrower would dominate the event in a way not seen before in his home state.

It would lead Peacock to national crowns, Olympic Games, world championships and medals at the last two Commonwealth Games.

It would also become one of the many fascinating feats meticulously recorded in the recently-launched Tasmanian Athletics Historical Results.

So meticulous in fact that it can be stated with every degree of certainty that Peacock's victorious distances have ranged from 59.58 metres up to 84.04 and that his younger brother Huw has had the fun of sharing the podium on no fewer than nine occasions.

The archive has been a three-year labour of love for site curator and principal researcher Brian Roe who also happens to be a fellow sports columnist with The Examiner but is far too modest to trumpet the achievement so I'm doing it for him.

Roey said athletics has enjoyed "one of the longest, proudest and successful histories of any sport in Tasmania since European settlement".

Initially mainly the province of schoolchildren and the "professional" running carnivals that remain the pride and joy of many towns around the state, the "amateur" tradition took a while to find its feet - eventually doing so from 1902 when the newly-formed Tasmanian Amateur Athletic Association staged its first cross-country championships.

"Since then track and field, race walking, road and cross-country running and, more recently, mountain and trail events have been embedded in Tasmania culture," Roe said.

Inspired by the impressive work of the Australian Athletics History Group led by Paul Jenes and Peter Hamilton, Roe sought to create a similar database for Tasmania.

The plan was to identify and record every gold, silver and bronze medallist in Tasmanian open athletics championships since Cecil Hanigan was first across the line in that 1902 cross-country championship.

Trawling through the "exceptional reporting of athletics competition" (thanks Brian) in countless dusty copies of Tasmanian newspapers enabled Roe to unearth some staggering statistics.

When Ron Foster came second in the men's 10km walk in 2019, it was a mere 54 years since he first climbed a Tasmanian athletics podium - also to accept a silver medal - in the high jump in 1965.

The 93 medals claimed during Ian Murray's exceptional career is, unsurprisingly, the most by any Tasmanian while Jo Millar-Cubit has the distinction of winning the most state open titles with 38, just ahead of the legendary Bill Emmerton (37) and Steve Knott (36).

Roe's project was almost as daunting and exhausting as Foster's career span.

Missing, incomplete or conflicting records - particularly in the 1990s and 2000s - presented a delightful headache but someone with such a passion for athletics was never going to be deterred by a few hurdles.

"Life for results historians is a breeze these days with meet management programs for processing and production and the internet for presentation and storage," he said.

"The detail provided by the newspapers particularly in the first half of the last century when reporting on state championships - albeit with a reluctance to reveal first names of those taking part - has proved to be a goldmine."

With the welcome assistance of like-minded individuals such as Wayne Fletcher, Adele Lucas, Wayne Mason and Daniel Smee, plus staff at the Tasmanian Archives and Launceston and Hobart libraries, Roe was able to fill in most gaps before transferring his labours online.

The archive includes a "by athlete" tab alphabetically chronicling the known history of Tasmanian athletic achievements.

It makes for addictive viewing, from the gold medals in high jump and pole vault won by G. Aaron (first name unknown) in 1961-62 to the impressive throwing record across javelin, shot put, discus and hammer of the superbly-named H. Zglobicki (first name also not known).

In contrast to the solitary Zglobicki, there are 22 Smiths on an honour roll acknowledging everyone from the state's only Olympic medallist David Lean's three state titles over 120, 220 and 440 yards in 1953-54 to the 2017 3000m steeplechase triumph of current international sensation Stewart McSweyn.

However, Roe is quick to state that the extensive project is far from being finished.

"We welcome any news of missing material, incorrect results, unknown first names etc," he said.

"This is for sure a work in progress."

Next on the agenda will be an attempt to include the Athletics Tasmania honours lists and biographies of life members.

And of course annual updates, if only to see if Peacock can add a 16th consecutive javelin title.