[…]never felt that magnetic admiration to someone who was great at something, wanted to imitate and ultimately defeat him.
To admire someone is to want to defeat them? You do realize that where artisans are typically concerned, being exceeded is not being defeated? You seem to be putting an unhealthy amount of attention of being exalted as The Best (tm). (For starters, where does that leave introverted men like myself who don’t like that sort of attention?)
Never mind that history is replete with evidence that the desire to be Good and the desire to be Great tend to collide with each other.