Other people has already noted the part about Oda mentioning Zoro would place higher if the race is shorter. One thing I am confused about is why people seems to be trying to speed scale using Kings’ imperial udon and acting like Zoro can’t deal with laser beams’ speed (considering he already dodged Queens).
His exact words is “how can you
block it, its like a laser beam” not “how can you
dodge it, its like a laser beam”
I thought it was clear that Zoro is referring to to shockwave nature of the attack making it difficult to block whether than it being a speed issue as he literally dodged it here and then dodged it again at point blank range while Emma was messing with him next chapter, unless people thinks that it takes less speed to move your whole body to dodge something than to move just your arms/swords to block it.