MANCHESTER — Running on home soil nearly two months before the London Olympics, Jessica Ennis thought she had produced a career best in the 110m hurdles — until organizers discovered a major blunder.

Only nine hurdles had been set out instead of the regulation 10 at the Great City Games in Manchester, northern England Sunday. The heptathlete clocked 12.75 sec, 0.04sec faster than her previous best.

“I am so annoyed. I still had a good competitive race, but I’ve just not got the result I wanted,” said Ennis. “It’s a great event but that’s a massive, massive mess-up.”

A spokesman said: “There has been a technical error and there were nine sets of hurdles out on the course instead of 10. We’ll conduct a thorough investigation and find out what happened and why and by whom. It’s a very unfortunate mistake, we’re very unhappy about it.” — AFP