Using Michael Phelps as an example, because his talent is extremly quantifiable. According to wikipedia, his career best 200m short course freestyle time is 1:

Using Michael Phelps as an example, because his talent is extremly quantifiable. According to wikipedia, his career best 200m short course freestyle time is 1:42.78 [0]. In contrast the cobsideration time for 2019-2020 high school boys 200m freestyle is 1:51.05 (I think this is the same event, but Phelp's short and long course time are close enough that the point holds even if there is a slight difference in the event definition). In quantitative terms, the best swimmer humanity has to offer is about 7.4% better than a bunch of highschoolers. In objective terms, both in absolute time and percentage improvement an increase at skill in swimming has a much larger effect on less skilled swimmers. And this result holds true for almost all skills. Looking at world records, of the 39 world records he has set, 35 have been beaten by others. [0] Sports like swimming are designed specifically to amplify marginal differences. That is why so much effort goes into accuratly timing them: the difference in their times is marginal. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Phelps https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Phelps [1] https://swimswam.com/nisca-releases-2019-20-all-america-time-standards-and-theyre-faster/ https://swimswam.com/nisca-releases-2019-20-all-america-time...