People who do compete without a set goal (e.g. I win this cup, get the prize money and go do X that I want to do) are victims of bullshit.

That is a wild take.

To borrow from Daniel Pink's book "Drive" which focuses on motivation theory, external motivators like money or prizes take you nowhere near as far as internal motivators. You are more likely to succeed generally and reach higher levels of performance if your motivation is intrinsic because you give that motivation to yourself and it is self-amplifying. Of course, his bent is more business-meets-academia, but I would struggle to see a world where it doesn't also apply here. Would you just up and start a new hobby because you won the local competition?

It seems to me that by your logic you go take a karate class so you can get a black belt and then quit? Where's the satisfaction in that? I don't think that's a problem of being a "victim of bullshit", it's about the pursuit of excellence for its own sake.