For colts in particular, that top-level success is important on a CV.
They build self-harm into the system; they render top-level success impossible without massive pharmaceutical risk.
Coe, like many great former athletes, falls back on his instinctive belief that there is a link between top-level success and grassroots growth.
The Guardian understands a performance expert will also be recruited in the coming months to assist Melville with the job of converting England's huge playing numbers into more consistent top-level success.
It was a fourth win from four runs in France for Teruya Yoshida's colourbearer, her previous visit having yielded her first top-level success in the Prix Marcel Boussac last October.
He was a warm order to gain his second top-level success in the final race on Arc day and after travelling well throughout, the 8-11 favourite showed off his devastating turn of foot to secure an emphatic victory in the hands of Harry Bentley.
Eddery, awarded an honorary OBE in 2005, was loyal, generous, easy-going and grounded, and a remarkable natural horseman, but his second career, as a trainer at stables near Aylesbury, reached nothing like the heights of his first; he had one top-level success, with Hearts Of Fire in Italy.
Since finishing second in Beijing, Britain's Paralympic athletes have not been allowed to rest on their laurels and despite the recent departure of chief executive Phil Lane, they have continued to amass top-level success.
Toure was City's Wembley hero with the semi-final winner against Manchester United - and the giant Ivory Coast midfield man was on target again 16 minutes from time to set the seal on their first top-level success since the 1976 League Cup win against Newcastle United.
Those facts present one side of the coin, but detractors will say that Roger Lewis was obsessed with success at the top level both financially and from the point of view of success on the international field and concentrated far too much on that world stage to the detriment of rugby at lower levels in Wales.
It will be interesting to see what impact his success at the top level of the sport will have on Nascar's diversity in the coming years.
