Oh, come on, I think the allegory with "athletes" is a bit far-fetched. The guys from the VT community don't treat every game like it's some kind of Olympics; I'm sure they just relax and play Heroes in the evenings. And the SoD players, in turn, try to show their maximum skill and play as well as possible in tournament games; they simply accept the fact that a unit might get wiped out, etc. In short, everyone is happy; some people just prefer the VT gameplay, while others prefer SoD.