Are some athletes missing a fundaMENTAL component to their training?

Practice makes perfect, right? Or, if you keep training and improving, you will win medals, right? The common motivational advice from other athletes is: "Keep practicing and never give up!"

When I hear statements like these, it seems that athletics can be simplified into a formula.  You train for this many hours (10,000 hours as said by Malcolm Gladwell)  or repeat the motion 50,000 times, and you will excel at it.  In many sports programs, the focus is on the physical and technical aspects.  The athletes constantly train to improve their technique to become the best they can be.  They go to practice and do drills to better their performance.