It's unfortunately not the point.
First of all, a lot of these guys are going to be gracious in this situation and say something to that effect.
Secondly there isn't a caveat in the rules that says "if you jostle an athlete who you were probably going to beat anyway it's fine".
You're trying to smash this square peg logic through a round hole here. What if this exact same incident happened with 200m to go? It very well could have - does that change the interpretation of what has to be a blanket rule because obviously you can't have a rulebook that has differing interpretations for every moment of the race? This mental gymnastic at play based on "Farken was going backwards" is completely and utterly irrelevant. So many of these in-race rules also incapsulate underlying intent as is the case with most common laws in society. They aren't absolutely literal because that would severely limit the values they seek to uphold.
That is what you are doing here. You are saying "well Hocker did not gain an advantage because he didn't need an advantage based on him clearly being better at this point in the race than Farken" - doesn't work that way! If Hocker was so much better why did he let the field blanket him with 250m to run? He gambled on a gap opening up to his liking like it fortunately did for him in Paris - the problem was this wasn't a sub 3.28 war of attrition race where it was about hanging on vs a pack accelerating to the finish with their fastest 100m segment of the race. He lost and made a bad decision.
To say the contact was "incidental"? That contact was the opposite of incidental!? Incidental contact in this context is chance contact as a consequence of another action. He knew exactly what he was doing! He visibly looks across to his right a split second before actively deciding on what he wants to do and does it because he realizes there is absolutely no space.
Look I think all fans of the event are disappointed we won't see a Hocker v Laros v Kerr showdown in the final. Would the final be better off with the reigning Olympic Champ in it vs Robert Farken? (and no disrespect intended to him at all) - yes it would. But you can't just modify rules to suit your agenda. The IAAF had to DQ Usain Bolt in 2011 for a false start even though that clearly wasn't the best for the product but what else should they do? Right decision made, let's stay rational vs emotional on this one.
