I think that there are more weak points where sports analogy breaks - sports is generally about preparing for competition and competition is not a daily event.

I think that there are more weak points where sports analogy breaks - sports is generally about preparing for competition and competition is not a daily event. If we continue with this analogy this would mean that the developers should be training for a while before hitting a day (or week) of an actual work, but we are actually expected to treat every day as a competition day. Another point is, that the training varies over the period with every practice having a different goal - some are harder, some are easier and there is a great emphasis on rest and not over-training. And finally, sports are frequently cyclic, based around seasons - with competition and non-competition seasons. Competition seasons are about getting to a top performance so you can hit these N competition with all you can, while non-competition ones are all about resting and getting your sanity back. So, while there are some parallels, I don't think this is a great analogy. I don't think getting top performance day after day is possible on regular basis, but, unfortunately, some people are certainly expecting it.