If QWERTY was designed to be the worst possible layout, to make typing slow in order to prevent jams, then now, with n-key rollover, we're all stuck with the worst possible layout.
If instead it was designed to be the most jam-free possible layout, with a secondary goal of being as fast as possible given that criterion, it's probably not that bad, and we'd live in a world where the fastest QWERTY typists aren't that much slower than the fastest typists, period.
And, in fact, we see that, while the world record was at one time held by a Dvorak typist, the prize at present belongs to QWERTY:
As per the claim of the fastest typist. I would be shocked it steno doesn't win that, hands down.
Edit: Added in "because you are typing too fast", which was part of the original claim. I should have noted I don't know if I believe it, but I did want to raise that something that makes you go as fast as you can by keeping you from going too fast, both slows you down and makes you type faster. At the same time.
Weird thing in these discussions is considering that most jam-free possible layout and as fast as possible was somehow different design goal. But, in world of early mechanical typewriters, it was the same! You couldn't have "fast" layout that jammed because it wouldn't be fast, and if you had jam-free layout it probably was fast, because it weren't forcing you to depress each key completely before pressing next.
The system described in the OP text is a form of stenography, conducted with a normal keyboard. I would be surprised if a competition typist, presented with an already-shortened text, couldn't beat out most stenotype stenographers working off the original text.
It would be unfair for a typing competition to exclude a chorded keypad, and I don't know of they do or not. It's completely fair to not accept "ts cmptly fr" as the transcription of "it's completely fair", no matter how it's typed in.
