> Your comment clearly shows that you haven't read the article.

This was my first thought. Then I thought about it some more, and became persuaded I was wrong. I definitely did read the article.

According to the explanation in the article, it’s a narrow slice, so the back of the wheel would be photographed when that passed the finish line, even if ~30cm out – at which point the front would be clearly over the finish line.

The point being that the wheel is bigger than 30cm. It’s subtle, but I’m persuaded – unless I’m missing something, like them not having or not actually enforcing wheel-size regulations.

I personally find it very difficult to reason about something that looks so much like a photograph where only vertically-aligned points were taken at the same time.

I think you misunderstood how a photo finish camera works. Please try re-watching the explanation video. The photo isn't a snapshot of the race at a specific time, the photo shows an entire interval where the top cyclers passed the finish line. It's like having long shutter time and a narrow slit and slowly moving the camera such that you get the view of the slit projected along the entire camera sensor.

You don't understand his point. He states "Each pixel column is a specific point in time." He's saying you can observe when the BACK of the wheel crosses the too-early "camera line" and determine the winner.

Unfortunately this isn't true if the camera line is not parallel to the finish line, which it probably was not.