The way I think of it, if one of those two tied first-place winners had been just a tiny bit slower, I’d definitely be third. Another competitor doing worse shouldn’t decrease my standings, so I must have also been third before, too.
It depends upon what you are calling the rankings.
If you call it “first place”, “second place”, etc., then a tie for first means the next best team is in “third place.”
But if you call it “first rank”, “second rank”, etc., then the number of people/teams tied for the first ranking doesn’t affect the fact that the next best are in the “second rank”. I learned that lesson when I took the exam for Workers’ Compensation Judge in California in 1997, and ended up in the “third rank”. I thought it meant I was third highest scorer, but no, there were about 15 people ahead of me in first and second ranks.
But that’s also not implying that all of the people in the same rank are equal. It’s more like giving students grades: You can have any number of As, Bs, Cs, Ds, or Fs, and while you can tell that a B student did better than a C student, you can’t tell which of two B students is better, just from their grade.