Intelligence is a myth

There seems to be a general admiration for those who appear to possess a "natural" intelligence.

How exactly do you determine if someone is "naturally" intelligent? The observable functionality of any brain is dependent on practice and exposure. For example, take two different people. One who practices a lot of sport regularly and another who never plays sport. They are both introduced to a brand new sport at the same time. It would be expected that the sportsman picks up the new sport faster and better than the non -sportsman, but this can't be attributed to his "natural born talent". What is really being tested here is their experience in kinaesthetic activities.

There seems to be a general admiration for those who appear to possess a "natural" intelligence.

How exactly do you determine if someone is "naturally" intelligent? The observable functionality of any brain is dependent on practice and exposure. For example, take two different people. One who practices a lot of sport regularly and another who never plays sport. They are both introduced to a brand new sport at the same time. It would be expected that the sportsman picks up the new sport faster and better than the non -sportsman, but this can't be attributed to his "natural born talent". What is really being tested here is their experience in kinaesthetic activities.

There are certain traits and personalities which can lend themselves to picking up ideas quicker or generally being better at a thing. That's about the closest I think you can get to "natural intelligence". There are so many other factors that will play a role in how good somebody is at things/ how intelligent they are though.

So for instance some people have their brains wired in such a way that they have poor coordination (think dyspraxia). That means on the flip side sine people naturally have better coordination. That gives them a starting boost when it comes to sports and brings them a step closer to potentially being a pro footballer. But other things will also contribute, for better or worse. Maybe they have a malformed foot, maybe they never got introduced to football, maybe they don't practice enough. Maybe somebody else doesn't have as good natural coordination, but have a personality where they can practice the same thing a lot, had an inspiring PE teacher and generally good fitness.

Some people were wired in ways that help them see patterns easily, handle multiple things in their head at one time, remember specific details, hear and recognise tube and pitch. We're all wired a bit differently and that does give us a bit of an edge with certain things, but it's by no means all there is to it.
And the idea of a single definition of intelligence is also quite frankly a load of carp. There are so many different types of knowledge and skill that you can't really quantify intelligence.

So yeah I reckon there is something to be said for the idea of an innate level of skill or ability, bit it's not a huge deal and it doesn't equate to bring "naturally intelligent,".

Again, sport is a completely different thing to intelligence.

It's just not true to say that intelligence isn't a thing; that's a factually incorrect statement that ignores the mountain of evidence to the contrary.

However, obviously, intelligence isn't just a product of genetics. Fluid intelligence (roughly speaking, the ability to learn and problem solve), is highly dependent on nutrition and intellectual stimulation in the early years of childhood, hence the Flynn Effect (increase in the IQ of american children over last 100 years by a very significant margin.) Fluid intelligence is, however, pretty much fixed by the late teens.

Crystallized intelligence (roughly summarized as knowledge) will increase over the course of most people's lifetime.

Your talking about something very different which is skills and practice in sport (coordination, athletic performance, confidence in social interaction) which of course you will improve if you do a lot of it. Ability to solve abstract problems, not so much.

Again, sport is a completely different thing to intelligence.

It's not. Performance at a sport comes under kinaesthetic ability (coordination, spatial awareness, reaction speed) which is a form of intelligence.

coordination, spatial awareness and reaction time are not forms of intelligence. Sorry, they're just not, no matter how much you want them to be. However it wouldn't surprise me if there is a correlation between intelligence and the traits you mentioned, but that doesn't make them 'forms of intelligence'.