THE celebrations will be loud and long at the end of this year’s women’s 120m handicap at the Keilor Gift meet but there will be an air of sadness surrounding the race as the athletics fraternity remembers star athlete Billie Jo Petersen.

The women’s 120m handicap will be named in honour of Petersen, a winner of the race in 2007 and beloved figure in Victorian athletics circles, who passed away unexpectedly in November last year.

The 26-year-old was found dead in her Geelong home by fiancée and fellow athlete Mark Hignett in November.

“I came home from work and, we are still not 100 per cent sure what happened, we are still waiting on the coroner’s report, but she had some sort of seizure - a heart attack or a blood clot,” Hignett said. “It was just one of those things. By the time I found her she had been there for nine or 10 hours.”

The Keilor meet has special significance for Hignett, who will contest the men’s Gift this year at Keilor Recreation Reserve. It was there that he and Petersen began their relationship.

“In 2007 we met at Keilor. It started from there. We started dating. She would fly to Sydney and I would fly to Melbourne every two weeks. After Stawell in 2008 I moved here. We lived in Geelong together.

“We got engaged in July and were going to be married in May.”

Hignett said that Petersen would be rapt with having the race named after her and it showed her standing among her peers.

“A lot of people were saying to me, any good runners that have had races named after them, a lot of them are elderly people born from the 1940s and ’50s.

“Its great. It shows the amount of respect and admiration people had and the type of runner she was, not only how great a runner she was but how much a genuine person she was.”

Petersen was a remarkable athlete, with a host of titles to her name. Coming from South Bendigo and taking up running in her teens, he career culminated in 2007 when she took out the Wangaratta Gift (400m), Casey Gift (400m), Keilor Gift, Burramaine Gift (100m), St Bernards Gift (400m), and came third at the Stawell Gift (400m) where Tamsyn Lewis finished fourth.

She was rewarded with the Australian Athletic Confederation Female Sprinter of the Year and Victorian Athletic League’s Female Athlete of the Year.

The 2008-09 season was marred by an injury but Petersen was primed for the current season according to her coach of 10 years Trevor Beaton.

“In 2008-09 she had a calf tear,” he said. “The start of this season, her first run she came second in Geelong in an open race. She was beaten by a man there. It was going to be a big year for her this year. She was the best trainer I have ever had and I’ve been in the sport for 30 years. I had two brothers Darren and Dizzy Lynch who won 11 Stawells between them and this girl trained literally as hard as those guys.”

Hignett said that despite all her achievements and her warm personality, Petersen did not know people admired her.

“She would be laughing upstairs. I said in her eulogy at the funeral, she never really understood how people felt about her.

“When she was running she was so focused so a lot of people would see her before the race and would think she was stuck up so a lot of people wouldn’t approach her. But she was so focused and a lot of people eventually realized that. At the funeral there was seven to 800 people there. The church was full and there were tributes in the paper. She wouldn’t believe it - how people felt about her.”

Hignett will present the winner’s sash after the race on 20 February to honour his fiancée but in truth he said he wished he did not have to.

“I wish there wasn’t a race named after her. I wish we weren’t having this conversation. I wish she was coming to Keilor with me to run. She was one of a kind. The most determined athlete I have ever met, male or female. I trained with her in the gym for three years and there was nothing she couldn’t do.”