Yes, exactly! It is no insult to players from earlier eras that today's players have surpassed them, just as it is no insult to track and field athletes from earlier eras that their records don't still stand. Today's athletes have better equipment, better training, and better medicine, just as today's chess players have 24-hour access to computers better than any human and databases with millions of games. It would be surprising if today's top players weren't better than they used to be.
Given today's level of obsession required to become #1 in any professional sport, I wonder what kind will be needed to be #1 in, say, 25 years. Have we reached some sort of pinnacle? I doubt it, but we probably thought these kind of athletes 30 years ago were already as perfectionists as they could be.
P.S. I mean obsession in regards to hours devoted to training, practicing, building etc, not as a description of their personality, although it probably is present there in varying quantities.
