Don’t really get all this. If it’s quicker to walk, it’s quicker to walk. It’s a race. “Fair” doesn’t come into it. If you’re quicker, you should be in front anyway?
In motorbike racing, if one guy prefers to keep loads of corner speed, and somone else prefers to stop the bike, lay it over, get it back up and get hard on the gas, they’re going to have a mismatch, but the faster guy round the circuit will win. And if it’s very close, the canniest racer will win.
What’s different here? And who cares, really?? The guy who would have come 26th, but came 27th because someone was walking ahead of him? Or the guy who came second, but would have won if that guy hadn’t been walking? The latter doens’t seem likely, the former should be thinking about how to get 10 places ahead, not 1.
And neither would mention it if they were good enough to avoid something avoidable, or sportsmanlike enough to write it off as a racing incident, whether avoidable or not.