This was one obstacle London Olympic poster girl Jessica Ennis didn't expect to face.
The 26-year-old heptathlete was denied a personal best in the 100m hurdles Sunday at the Great CityGames in Manchester because organizers embarrassingly laid out only nine barriers instead of the necessary 10.
Ennis, a gold medal hope for Great Britain at this year's Olympics, clocked 12.75 seconds to win the race, but was told her time would not stand.
"I can't believe that. It's a great event but that's a massive, massive mess-up," a frustrated Ennis said, according to The Guardian.
"As an athlete, you expect that everything should be set up properly and there should be no mistakes like that so I am pretty disappointed with that.
"I feel let down. I felt like it was a good race, I was running well, I was obviously coming through at the end. Stick another hurdle on there it would have been the same outcome but, argh, I'm so annoyed."
Event organizers Nova International issued a statement apologizing for the gaffe.
"We can confirm that due to human error only nine sets of hurdles rather than the required 10 were put out on track for the women's 100m hurdles event this afternoon.
"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."
Ennis later joked she would be counting the hurdles at her next competition, in Gotzis, Austria, this weekend.
