The Economist Hello, this is Alok Jha,
host of Babbage, our weekly podcast on science and technology.
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Novak Djokovic first picked up a tennis racket when he was four years old.
At the age of 12 he left his native Serbia for a tennis academy in Germany.
He won his first major title, the 2008 Australian Open, when he was 20.
Today he has another 23 majors under his belt and he has spent more time ranked number one in the world than any other player.
Mr.
Djokovic's illustrious career fits a common idea of human excellence.
A child prodigy, schooled intensely in his early years, goes on to conquer his chosen field.
But a paper published in Science at the end of last year suggests he may be something of an exception rather than the rule.
It concludes that the very best performers in all sorts of fields beyond just sport tend to follow a rather different path.
This study, led by Arna Gulich,
a sports scientist at the RPTU University Kaiserslautern Landau in Germany,
crunched data covering more than 34,000 elite performers in several areas,
including sport, chess, classical music and academia.
It concluded that although they often reach a high level, the best-performing,
most intensely-drilled teenagers tend not to become true superstars as adults.