A camera like this will make it a lot easier (and probably cheaper!) to verify who wins competitions, such as road bike races where a 200km race can be won by millimeters.
I don't think so. You've posted a link to Wikipedia in an adjacent thread that clearly says that photo finish cameras do NOT use traditional 2D sensors, but a "1D" single-strip sensor with very high refresh rate. They intentionally use an effect similar to rolling shutter where instead of the currently exposed row moving up and down the sensor, there is just one row and the photographed subjects move against the camera.
Yes, you could capture a similar photo by aiming a global-shutter camera at the finish line and firing the shutter exactly when the first contender triggers a laser beam or something, but that would be much more complicated and expensive than just capturing a single slice of space and letting time flow along the perpendicular axis.
And oh hey! dpreview.com lives!