I'm curious. Do you mean it figuratively? I ask Claude Sonnet 3.7 Extended Thinking since it's usually reliable and the stats for running strongly suggest that for most competitions, the top percentile is closer to world-class athletes than the average person to top percentile athletes (possibly except Marathon).

*100m Sprint*:

1st percentile: ~18-20 seconds

50th percentile: ~14-15 seconds

99th percentile: ~11-11.5 seconds

Elite world-class: ~9.8-10.2 seconds

World record: 9.58 seconds (Usain Bolt, 2009)

*1-Mile Run*:

1st percentile: ~12-15 minutes

50th percentile: ~8-9 minutes

99th percentile: ~4:30-5:00 minutes

Elite world-class: ~3:45-3:55

World record: 3:43.13 (Hicham El Guerrouj, 1999)

*Marathon* (26.2 miles):

1st percentile: ~6+ hours

50th percentile: ~4:30-5:00 hours

99th percentile: ~3:00-3:15 hours

Elite world-class: ~2:05-2:10

World record: 2:00:35 (Kelvin Kiptum, 2023)*

They’re not talking about the results. They’re saying the gulf between the skill and strength required to go from 11s to 9s is larger than the gulf between 11s and 15s - that’s because it takes exponentially increasing effort for marginal gains as you approach world record times - it’s not a linear thing and thus looking at the output paints a really misleading picture on the relative difference in inputs

Well the one mile and marathon stats pretty much prove OPs point