10,000 hours - talent is overrated...

Great material here with the Science of Sport guys: Nature vs Nurture.

The discussion comes on the heel of a post regarding the Matthew Effect, the phenomenon where a disproportionate number of elite level sports people are born during the first few months of the year, which comes about as a result of a confusion between ability and maturity, and the selection of those children into regional or school teams based on their ability at a young age.

This led to the Nature vs Nurture argument, as it was suggested that unfair selection might leave out certain kids with talent - if you work hard enough, smart enough, and put in your 10,000 hours, then the Matthew Effect doesn't matter. Success depends on a combination of nature and nurture, but the exact order of this is still yet to be defined.

In regards to training, how do you know ahead of time what you can achieve? Talent is something you can only see through hindsight. If you hit that world record, you have talent, because you beat out other people who tried just as hard as you did. But is "talent" anything more than a nice way of explaining why someone else's performance is better than yours?