I totally agree with you. Performances and results in big events are the product of talent (of the athlete) x goodness of training (that is the product of goodness of methodology x seriousness in application). So, there are always two different components in athletics success : THE ATHLETE and THE COACH. But, sometime a very talented athlete without a good coach can be able to reach top results (not to last, but sometime a good shape can be a casuality : how many athletes had a good results and then desappeared ?) ; never a good coach without talented athletes can push the same at the top.
Personally, the performance of a my athlete that gave me more satisfacion was a 2:18:23 in a marathon (Venice, '95) of a Swiss guy (was at that time the physiotherapist of Italian Team, working with us in Tirrenia, our national center), without any kind of talent (4:20 in 1500m, no elasticity, very bad running style), working 8 hours per day with our athletes, that had the will to train hard after finishing is job (sometime from 9 to 11 pm during September), that was a totally unthinkable performance.
And, about last year, of course I was satisfied about the victory of Shaheen in World Championships, but it was normal with his qualities. I was very more excited when I saw Nicholas Kemboi growing so fast, when I had the opportunity to discover his talent step by step after training him from 3 years but giving programs and never having the opportunity to stay with him for 75 continuous day for knowing his attitude before never discovered.
But it's also true that you can grow in your experience only having direct contacts with something new. So, during the last 6 years I matured more advanced ideas about human limits, about new types of training, about connections without different type of training and performance, about the importance of resting and/or modulating training. And these new ideas were possible because I had informations that only very talented athletes could give me. No books, no studies, no scientists can give me the same information. It's like a very good engineer, able to design a perfect car for travelling on Kenyan roads, that has in his mind and in his "theorical knowledges" the capacity of designing a "Formula One" like Ferrari or Williams, but cannot do it till when has not the opportunity to work at that level, discovering a lot of different problems that, before, he didn't know could exist.
A coach good for every athlete and for every kind of age and of value doesn't exist. I have problem, now, when I speak about the activity of very young people, and also when I speak about the activity of an amateur, because in my mind the normal level of talent, of training-sessions, of professionalism, and so of intensity in training, are very different from the level of basic activity, and it's not possible to do in miniature the same training of a champion for a normal athlete.
Simply, they are two different things.