A cliff where there is a slope
Performance is continuous; recognition is not. Two athletes separated by a margin no spectator could perceive are treated as belonging to different categories of achievement, one celebrated and one consoled. The cut-off is necessary for awarding medals and useless for evaluating athletes.
The consequences are material
In many programmes, medals drive funding for the next cycle. That means the arbitrary side of the cut-off has real financial effects, rewarding luck and penalising narrow misfortune. It is hard to design around, but worth naming rather than treating as justice.
What I try to do instead
The measure I trust most is whether an athlete produced their best when it counted. Someone who set a personal best in a final and finished fourth did their job completely. Someone who won bronze well below their level did not. The scoreboard will never say so, but the honest account should.