Ericsson et al. found that top-tier experts differ from second-tier experts in the amount of deliberate practice they’d accumulated over the years. Famously, they found that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master a skill like playing chess or playing a musical instrument.
Now Hambrick et al. have found that the cumulative amount of deliberate practice explains about a third of the variance in skill level between experts.
That leaves plenty of room for natural talent to play a role — but it also leaves room for quality of practice, coaching, etc.