The writers claim of `the extreme meritocracy of sports`is pretty amazing. Considering all the research into 'Everyone in Baseball is born in August' to the constant drum of doping scandal. Or people moving whole families, or rich buying second houses (near sky slopes) to pump their kids past the poorer competition, etc.
It's pretty crazy for anyone to imagine sports as 'meritocracy' when exact birth-day, parents wealth, school district/ college wealth, etc, clearly is a HUGE driver of sports outcome (1/4 ? 1/2 ? ). And that is not tying in genetics, or cheating, or more.
Scrape any 'meritocracy', and you'll find it a) by humans, b) in a culture, and underlying unfairness of the cultures still has a heavy impact.