The fact is, the average person couldn't become a professional athlete no matter how hard they worked. That causes athletes' genetic gifts to overshadow their hard work.
The point is that you could make the comparison to the top 1% (that's what a pro athlete is) of anything and point out that innate talent and hard work is what got them there. He uses athletes because it's easy - most of us don't have that ability, and somehow feel this isn't fair.
Most Hacker News readers, though, are on the high end of the IQ scale. I sure as hell don't have to explain to you how (generally) our innate ability to understand computers better than the average person somehow means we have to work less...
And were born during the right months.
That's important because a couple of months of age makes a big difference when you're young. Since you're competing with other folks who also have both genes and work ethic, physical maturity differences can be significant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Phelps
6 ft 4 in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Bernard
6 ft 5 in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9sar_Cielo_Filho
6 ft 5 in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Tae_Hwan
6 ft in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oussama_Mellouli
6 ft 3 in http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/TUN/Oussama+Mellouli/217537
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Peirsol
6 ft 4 in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Lochte
6 ft 2 in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosuke_Kitajima
5 ft 10 in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maarten_van_der_Weijden (10 km marathon)
6 ft 7 1⁄2 in
That causes athletes' genetic gifts to
overshadow their hard work.