Leon Lett was different. Endurance athletes are exhausted at the end of the race and are hanging on as long as they can. Lett has never felt the complete exhaustion of a championship-level 10,000-meter race.
Huddle made a gigantic mistake, Infeld earned a bronze medal that she should in no way feel sheepish about (if anything she should be even prouder of it than if she'd finished third by a big margin), but Huddle is not like Lett.
It's always funny to me how much people care about the difference between third and fourth. I mean, what if they gave away medals to the top five or the top two? This wouldn't mean nearly as much. Of course, I would be the same way if I was a professional runner, but it does seem silly when you look at it objectively, right, that an award for finishing third would mean so much while finishing fourth would mean so little? Ben Johnson has plenty of medals still, doesn't he? Showed them off in that ESPN 30 for 30 documentary. They don't mean much anymore.
It just feels as if someone who knows nothing of the Olympic medals system or track and field would look at this race and be like, well, so she got fourth instead of third. I guess that's kind of bummer, but it's not like was going to win and then lost. Lesson learned, whatever, carry on.