Yes, I do honestly believe what I wrote.
The "only" explanation isn't a poor attempt at gamesmanship, I gave quite a detailed post on another explanation above.
Could it have been foul play? I guess it could have, but the body of evidence to support that is pretty small considering the miniscule potential gain, while the evidence against it is fairly large when looking at the event as a whole.
No, I've never done a marathon. I've done a few half's where I haven't been able to think very clearly near the end, but I don't think my previous running history is too relevant here.
I completely disagree with your last paragraph. The duress he was under definitely could have contributed to this event. He's hurting (everyone is) at 30k, running faster than he should have been at that point, based on his finish time. Should he have been more careful? I could agree with that, it was pretty sloppy. But not intentional.
He wasn't knocking over bottles for 20 seconds straight - from touching the first bottle to grabbing the last one, the event lasts less than 1 second.