I disagree about the point of the first paragraph. Orwell made a bad translation (which was Orwell's point) "Competitive activities" sounds like it refers to

I disagree about the point of the first paragraph. Orwell made a bad translation (which was Orwell's point) "Competitive activities" sounds like it refers to artificial, structured activities made for the purpose of measuring ability, so just like you say the correlation should be strong. In those activities, people work hard to make sure the competitors don't cheat, that the rules are fair, and so on. However, the first paragraph is not about artificial competitions but about natural, chaotic situations. It's about victory in a chaotic battle or acquiring wealth back when capitalism hadn't been invented yet. Basically it means "life is unfair, sometimes".