The only competition in mining is an orphan race.
Otherwise it doesn't matter when anyone finds a block coz you simply switch your work item to a new one and continue searching.
This switch also happens every 30 seconds and every time anyone on the planet finds a block.
Every block found is "randomly unaffected" by every other block found, other than a work switch.
So for example, if someone finds a block here, the next person who finds a block here could find it 1 second later, or 100 days later - they are "randomly independent" of each other.
There is no competition, there is no spoon
Gross simplification ahead
If you need to keep your competition metaphor ... imagine you are in a 2 week long race to find one of 2016 blocks before the difficulty changes; Everyone who solves a block in that time period wins. So, Kano is absolutely right in the sense that finding one of these 2016 blocks is independent of what else has been found. The first 2016 finishers all win.
And in about 2 weeks, the race ends and a new 2016 block race starts, which might be a little harder or easier than the last.
This all happens transparent to the miner who is happily working on a new math problem provided by the server every so often
