L Aruna Devi finished the Mumbai marathon in 3 hrs 9 minutes 59 seconds — faster than all other Indian challengers, but was too washed out by the effort to realise that she wasn’t among the three women who figured on the podium and picked the medals.

Apparently, volunteers in charge of ushering the winners completely missed that an Indian — running with thousands of others from Africa, Europe and Asia — had run past the tape-line, and instead mobbed Indresh Dhiraj as the Indian winner a good five minutes after Aruna Devi should’ve been swooped upon for clinching the honours.

Officials don’t deny that this blatant oversight could’ve been a result of volunteers — mostly college students from Mumbai — failing to recognise the 31-year-old Manipuri as an Indian, and mistaking her for a “foreign runner” owing to her North-east features.

Bruno Goveas from Procam International, the event’s promoters, said, “It’s likely that the volunteers confused her for a foreigner, so we missed her. There was a goof-up.”

The official result-list — which records the timings from the electronic-chip, and has details like bib number, name and nationality — averted a bigger blunder, when organisers admitted to the mistake and went looking for the real winner.

Aruna Devi, an Eastern Railway employee posted in Kolkata, said: “I knew I had won, but I had no energy left after finishing the race. Initially nobody came forward to offer water. Then one Didi (a volunteer) took me to resting room for athletes, and gave me a massage. When I felt all right I asked around, but I was told the medal-ceremony was over.”

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