Yes, but for some competitive activities, the rewards are meager unless you are one of the very best.
Even if you are one of the very best, the rewards are still meager absent intrinsic enjoyment of the activity. The corollary is that, with intrinsic enjoyment, being "simply" very, very good and not the best can still be thoroughly enjoyable and rational, and create positive contributions to society to boot. Here, for example, I'm thinking of high quality PhD scientists who do not pursue tenure track for some reason and instead go into industry.
