And finally, regardless of the perceived starting point, I could not find one example of a human being performing at an exceptional level in any field who had not worked extraordinarily hard to get there and had been through many struggles and shown great sense of purpose and remarkable resilience, including dealing with what sounds like boring repetitive practice and training.
In recent years there has been significant change in our understanding of the brain and on the development of ability. There is the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and her growth mindset, as well as the writings of Matthew Syed (Bounce, Black-Box Thinking and now – a children's book – You Are Awesome) and New York's Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers, David and Goliath).
The basic ideas are hugely important for all. We have the ability to develop exceptional skill and knowledge sets and to do so requires guidance (teaching, coaching, skilful encouragement), many hours of purposeful practice and opportunities to attempt things (perform and take risks) and learn how to respond to failures and successes in a way that propels us forward.
In theory these ideas should be truisms. In practice they are not. When applied they are, to use a cliche, game changers for the well-being of young people and the improvement of their abilities and opportunities in life.
They change classroom teachers from ability categorisers and brain fillers (with the appropriately levelled work) to genuine developers of aspirational and challenging human beings.
The time it takes to become good at a complex physical human skill-set also changes the way sports academies formulate their approach. Instead of "talent identification" they can massively broaden their nets and become developers of ability with a much healthier approach to young people as well as, in the long term, a much healthier club and sport.
Above all, these ideas give young people hope about themselves and changes their mindset.
If we throw out the "gifted and talented" labels and fully acknowledge that "genius" is a developed (not innate) state, should schools still provide for young people who already have a high degree of developed ability? Of course. There isn't a down side to this.
But in doing so we need to emphasise to these young people the need to keep taking risks, seeing failure as a stepping stone. We need to eliminate the negatives of labelling and no longer do, as many talent identification programmes do — throw a dozen "eggs" at a wall, hoping a couple bounce and become the "future of your club".
Around the world at present there is huge and justified concern about the mental well-being of young people and adults. The understanding that your abilities are grown over time, that "talent" is a developed ability, that "genius" is available to us all in some form if we are willing to genuinely dedicate ourselves towards it — are mind-changing.
Things are shifting. A few years back I spent a day with one of the world's great athletics coaches, Arthur Lydiard. I asked him if times had changed so much that no great distance runners would come from anywhere but Kenya or Morocco and if it was genetically based.
Arthur, adamant, in a way only he could be, stated that laziness was the only thing holding many back.
A couple of years ago I had an email exchange with Matthew Syed while watching the London marathon and asked why the commentators were using the word talent in every second sentence. They never mentioned dedication, years of development, diet, discipline, coaching and resilience to setbacks. At this year's London marathon the word talent was
barely mentioned, the other things, including courage, were.
These concepts are inspirational for adults too. I was told as a child that I didn't "have a musical bone" in my body. They were wrong (Syed's new You Are Awesome tells my inner-child so). I am about to go and keep practising on the guitar and I love the progress I am making.
• Alwyn Poole of the Villa Education Trust is involved with two Auckland charter schools.
