I don't know what you're arguing against, exactly. If you take two athletes with similar physical qualities, and one receives appropriate training while the ot

I don't know what you're arguing against, exactly. If you take two athletes with similar physical qualities, and one receives appropriate training while the other does not, the former will outcompete the latter. I'm assuming that everyone in the far right tail of elite performance has the biological advantages you mentioned. Let's simplify the model to two distributions to make it easier to see: well-trained vs. poorly-trained individuals, where the variance of each distribution is largely accounted for by physical differences. So long as these two distributions overlap, it is a mathematical certainty that some poorly-trained individuals will outperform some well-trained individuals, due to physical and genetic markers. So far so good. I'm suggesting that there are several overlapping distributions, and that it's impossible to know with certainty whether you've lost to someone due to their physical advantage or their superior cognitive approach & training - if you are only considering the two of you in isolation. The question must be asked of populations, not of individuals. Anyone who has experienced breaking through plateaus after a decade of training knows this is true. Whatever seem absurd to you must be due to some other miscommunication. I specifically exempted the top elite performers from consideration because in that restricted case my argument no longer holds. I thought that was clear.