There was chaos at the finish of the women’s 10K walk at the Pan American Games in Chile when the first 11 athletes home broke the existing world record.

Officials first started to suspect that something may have gone amiss when winning athlete, world champion Kimberly Garcia of Peru, crossed the line in a time of 1hr 12min and 26secs, which if valid would have knocked more than 11 minutes off the world record set by Jiayu Yang of China.

It is believed that the women’s race was more than 3km shorter than the official distance with the Pan American Games organisation quick to name and shame Marcelo Ithurralde, an expert commissioned by the association, who was the official designated take the measurements for the race.

“He did not take accurate measurements of the route the athletes took during the race,” the organisers said in a statement.

“We deeply regret the inconvenience for the athletes, their coaches, the public and the attending press, but this situation cannot be attributed to the organising committee.”

Despite having the world record stripped within a few seconds of her crossing the line, Garcia was still able to celebrate winning her gold medal, although she knew the timings were off during the race.

“We realised it since the first kilometre,” she said. “The time did not coincide with the distance, so It was more about us focusing on our feelings not to lose control,” Garcia said.

“We do control our pace a lot and right out of the gate, in our first lap, we saw the pace was too strong. It was quicker than the men usually do. We knew there was something strange, so we did not even take the timing into consideration.”

Harold Mayne-Nicholls, the executive director of the games, told a local radio station it was an embarrassment but insisted the organisers had nothing to do with it.

“It is a shame because the race was beautiful and obviously the Peruvian athlete must have raised her hopes for a world record,” he said.

“I was told they were going to correct this. If they didn’t, double shame.”

Although the athletes were allowed to keep their medals, the times of the race have been voided and the Olympic ranking points on offer will not be awarded.

There was a delay of more than an hour before the men’s race could start with the course remeasured to ensure the “lost” three kilometres were added to their event,