There's another thing about this article. They are comparing near misses with narrow wins. At that point, the near miss vs narrow win might be put down to luck,

There's another thing about this article. They are comparing near misses with narrow wins. At that point, the near miss vs narrow win might be put down to luck, and people who had a near miss might learn from it and work harder. People who had a huge loss might drop out completely or change careers or so on but they are not being talked about here.