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Given her wide and continuously growing variety of personality traits and ticks, calling Miura a flat character sounds hollow. In fact, it's very interesting you call her bland when she has one of the more varied personalities around.
She is a side character though, that I do not disagree with. But a side character defeating a main character is not bad storytelling. Indeed, the very purpose of side characters is to provide situations of development, growth and change to the main character, and in that respect Miura accomplished her intended purpose just fine.
You see, you are very, very wrong when claiming Vivio and her friends joined the tournament "on a whim." They had been looking forward to this for a long, long time and have been training quite hard to make it there. Note for example how they cheer that they are "finally" old enough to enter the tournament. This isn't just a whim, it is a dream. No, it's not a life changing experience like a life or death battle in the other Nanoha series, but then Vivid has never been about serious business ever since, what, chapter 3? It's a slice of life manga, which means that the growths of personality will adjust to that pace as well. And then still, losing a tournament you have dreamed of competing in is still a shocking experience. Unlike your magic example, this tournament was preceded by months of intense training. That is a loss you will feel as you put a ton of hard work into it.
And guess what? Vivio does feel it. And it hurts. And she vows to put even more effort into it and grow stronger because of it. So regardless of your claim that she shouldn't feel so bad about this, she does. And it does make her grow.
And then we get to the point where you lay the blame of the tournament continuing on the wrong person again. After the loss of Vivio, the main character, the tournament could have been over. But it can't. Why? Because there's a certain character that still needs to outshine Vivio. Again.
And it isn't Miura.
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