A new German study cited in The Economist (1/14/2026) sheds light on something educators, coaches, and mentors have long known: early performance is not necessarily a reliable predictor of later outcomes. There is no guarantee that a young child who reads at three or even two years of age will continue to be an advanced reader throughout life. A couch’s peewee hockey star is not likely to become the next Wayne Gretzky any more than the child drilled in Suzuki will necessarily become the next Yo-Yo Ma any more than the young child tutored in Russian Math will become a master of modern mathematics.

What this study—in which two sports scientists and two psychologists crunched data covering more than 34,000 elite performers in areas including sports, chess, classical music, and academia—clearly tells us is that the best-performing, most intensely drilled teenagers tend not to become true superstars as adults. Those who do become “superstars,” by contrast, tend not to stand out early. They, in fact, take longer to reach their peaks and seem to keep their interests wider for longer. 

A reliable pattern emerged in each field studied: elite youth performers and elite adults were almost entirely separate groups. Around 90% of superstar adults had not been superstars as children, while only 10% of top-level kids had gone on to become exceptional adults. It is not just that exceptional performance in childhood did not predict exceptional performance as an adult. The two were actually negatively correlated.

Why is it that broader interests and later flowering seem to be better indicators of higher success levels later on in life? Researchers offer these three hypotheses:

• Having a broad range of interests and waiting before choosing a specialty gives a child a better chance of finding the field best suited to their talents.  
• “Enhanced learning,” the idea that learning is itself a learnable skill, and a good way to hone it is to pursue a variety of things. When the time comes to focus on one, a better ability to learn makes training more effective, and hence improvement faster.  
• The last possibility is the limited-risk hypothesis, a fancy name for the straightforward idea that avoiding the hothouse, at least for a while, may stop youngsters from burning out, becoming disenchanted with endless practice, or simply getting bored with an activity after spending years pursuing it to the exclusion of all else.

This is not to say that the hothouse model does not work. It is a reliable way to produce highly competent people—just not the truly world-class performers. This means that sports, academies, selective schools, high-end conservatories may want to rethink how they do things. And parents might want to consider that their children will likely be better poised for later success—and perhaps happier in the meantime—if they expose them to a variety of experiences, without expecting peak performance, rather than drilling down on one.