I truly appreciate your contribution to this long dead conversation. It is to my regret I didn't respond sooner, but I cannot seem to withhold my desire to share. The following could be summed up as, "Everything wrong with sports. Merit is ambiguous. People abuse ambiguity for their own gain."

the presence of the playing field and the high speed cameras and whatnot means meritocracy is the actual basis for reward,

to confirm nobody’s cheating

Cheating in this context might be summed up as: Violating rules, unsporting. Possibly underhanded, deception, fraud, or trickery. A disparity or unfairness through action.

Sports being a meritocracy is absolutely true on a small scale. However, with a macro view some disparities come to light.

Disparities:

• Genetics.
• Environmental development. (Such as being trained from a young age, being able to afford a better coach, better nutrition, more opportunity, etc, etc.)
• Trickery. {An American football case, where the quarterback confuses the opposing team by standing up with the ball and walking toward the goal, comes to mind.)
• Undetected cheating. (Performance enhancing drug usage. Not illegal doping, but doping that hasn't been determined as such yet. Delaying select competitors before they get to the field. Etc.)
• Luck. (The wind blowing the ball. An opposing competitor stepping on an uneven spot of turf, or their gear malfunctioning,)
• Individual contribution and shared merit. (Do the players on the team who didn't contribute still gain merit?)

Exempted due to applicability: (read low or protracted defensibly and a vague determination of where "the game" begins and ends; philosophical)

• Player selection process. (Sure, the wisest managers would ideally select the best players, but offense and emotions may occlude foresight.)
• Who gets selected to be pulled off the bench? {A big can of worms.}
• • Depends on the coach, instead of the player.
• • The player not played gains less or no merit.
• • Argument to be had about the coach being the chess player of the game and merit based on strategies employed, sharing player's merit with the coach.
• Player trading.
• Corrupt judges/referees.
• Rigged games.
• Politics influencing decisions.
• Uncooperative players inhibiting success.
• Cultural biases.

people really like the idea of meritocracy

Back to the first half of my original point. People do really like the idea of meritocracy... when it aligns with their own views. "Merit" is founded on virtue, worth, or value. And all three depend on the evaluator.

• For instance, a football fan at a baseball match may not find the players very worthy, because it isn't football.

• Another instance, is cheating meritorious? A superior strategy requiring exceptional ability to successfully sabotage your opponent. (Devil's advocate, and a very Chinese sentiment. I'll not be defending this point, but it is wise to consider the biases inherent in personal culture determining what merit is.)

• Alternatively honor and respect determine merit. Also highly subjective, just look at Jihad contrasted to The Crusades.

This leads to the other half: Anything subjective is subject to abuse, because generally humans are selfish and tribal. It's how our ancestors survived. Any permanent governing system must account for, incorporate, protect, benefit from, and forcefully constrain or alter the governed's nature as necessary for the benefit or balancing of the governed and the governing system's continued future. Anything else eventually leads to revolution or collapse.

In truth, I believe a perpetual motion is impossible. Something must continually power and correct the machine running the humans but humans aren't capable of doing so. We will likely continue to have revolutions and disparities caused by revolutions until our collapse. The best we can hope to do, is make living on this rock less miserable for our fellow inhabitants.

Please have a lovely day.