alt Hacker NewsThe article is a paradigmatic example of innumeracy.
10% of prodigies becomes 10% of elite, whereas (whoknows)% of (general_population - prodigies) becomes 90% of elite.
How big is elite? How big is prodigies?
Well, for a start, I guess we can assume that size of elite == size of prodigies, because 10% == 10%.
But what is that size compared to general population?
If it's 1%, then 99% of muggles compete for slots in 0.9% of the population, so, hey, a prodigy is 11 times more likely to become an elite than a muggle.
If it's 0.1%, then a prodigy is 111 times more likely to become an elite than a muggle.
If it's 10% -- well, that's kind of stretching the definition of both prodigy and elite, isn't it?
tl;dr -- article is crap; research probably is, as well.
At least for chess the article mentions that they considered the top 10 players in children and senior categories. This would indicate that prodigy chess players are millions of time more likely to become elite compared to the general population.