Very surprised to hear again that blinking is
impossible on RR

so Matt you were right-- it's just a son de la putain de la glitch

lol
Jokes apart, the problem is more than a blink because as you said you are still not getting a replay anytime you get a PR, you are not getting the replay option on RR anymore.. so I'm looking at your splits: (17"08 16"98 16"90 16"90 16"99), not bad at all kinda really stable, but since we don't have the replay for this run I also checked your PAL PR on RR: 1'27"97 (17"71 17"53 17"57 17"59 17"57);
Well, I don't see anything wrong in the way you drive and I assume this is also how you drive in NTSC, so a question; just before your 1'24"85 have you played with your character and a) a regular ghost b) a saved ghost (your 2nd time: 1'25"25?!) c) or the ghost COM driver (weird) d) just Bowser without any ghost? Maybe one of these ghosts is glitched

or your cartridge is broken

and I think Antistar is right there is a good probability that you have a fake copy of SMK, unfortunately Matt