As someone who was involved with music competitions I can attest to being happier with 3rd than 2nd. For me it was the fact that if I was 3rd, well at least 2 p

As someone who was involved with music competitions I can attest to being happier with 3rd than 2nd. For me it was the fact that if I was 3rd, well at least 2 people were better than me, but if I was 2nd (and it was a close competition) it became an issue of "why did I loose?" When competition is close you can loose for factors outside of the competition itself. You can loose because of differences in judging opinions or because of a Judge not liking you, worse ranked competitors can win due to scoring calculation systems, you can even loose biased on how hungry or how bad the judges last meal was.