It's not that newcomers have little chance, but more the symptom showing that there's little interest for competitive AoE2 play among newcomers. Like Starcraft Brood War, that still features Flash, Jaedong and Bisu.

You can compare it to Starcraft 2, whose scene remains quite attractive, and the top 4 European players (all of them being top 10 world) are just 25 23, 21 and 18 years old.