Comment by necovek
That's not true.
It's not just a tradition or conditioning out of nothing: it was also feasibility to do so. Eg. you don't get that gymnastics podium seven times over, you only get one. Whereas for bowling and darts, adding one extra spot is not that much extra space. You also completely ignored one reason GP brought up: safety (in rally driving). To save on time, they still usually start with a few minutes delay on the same track.
Where it is feasible to compare side-by-side, we do (swimming, running but not eg. discus throw or high jump), and we award medals on direct result. Where it isn't, we use other independently tracked scores (time, points...).
Rally driving is less to do with safety and more to do with the complexity of adding more cars. There are also plenty of motor racing sports where multiple vehicle are on the track at any one time. But those courses are wider. Why aren’t Rally tracks wider? Well there’s no reason they couldn’t be, but the sport was never intended to operate that way. Whereas other motor sports was intended to be head to head.
But that aside, you’re building a strawman argument here (eg I was never arguing against safety elements) doing so actually agreeing with the point I was making:
Spectators are not the only, or even in many cases, primary, reason that events are structured the way they are.
I agree there are a plethora of other reasons and made that point myself. Safety being just one of them. Feasibility being another. But a lot of the time these problems can be solved by one means or another if event organisers truly wanted ways to run their event differently.