I know about those projects too; but at the end of the day, Python is basically CPython. Maybe PyPy should replace Python 2 (I'd argue so, loudly), but for now... CPython is the definition of Python. And it's not a easy problem to make CPython (Python) faster (GIL, effective dynamic analysis), like you said.

What's frustrating is that there's no visible effort to make the Standard Python very fast. Personally, I'd rather see the money poured into Python actually poured into SBCL, but that's just me.