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You don't spend much time around athletes, do you? Athletes compete because they want to do well. Certainly, only a few at one time have a realistic chance of actually winning, but I reckon that most don't want one person/team to win continually.

This is easiest to see in US football and baseball leagues--the fans and the league prefer some degree of parity so a single team doesn't dominate the sport.

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While I agree that most people don't want one person/team winning all the time, I believe that this does generate more interest, ie. Many people will take a vested interest in a baseball game so that they can cheer against the Yankees.

Cheering against the Yankees would be a waste of time if the Yankees literally won all the time. It would increase people's interest in the game the same way that a trick coin increases people's interest in betting on coin flips.

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