On partaking in Olympiads (Or the lack thereof)

I've felt a bit of a frustration recently preparing for Olympiads; I'm in Year 11/Grade 12, and this is my first "Olympiad" I'm actually taking part in, for real - I've been, and will continue to, study heavily! But I get heavily discouraged looking up resources for my practice, because everyone else is years ahead of me (Though I'll get onto this in a bit!)

My Primary School and Secondary School (Middle and High, respectively) nationally underperformed. There's no "olympiad winners" from these schools, and there's no real "alumni". I wasn't aware of Olympiads at these ages, but had I been, I imagine I would've done them!! But there was none of the sort at these schools.

And by no means am I trying to defend for my current performance on the basis of my schools underperformance!! But I think it would be ignorant not to consider how I didn't have a chance to get into Olympiads from a competitive age. With Olympiads, you tend to get into them around ages 10-12 to have national competitiveness, but I didn't know they even existed at that time. Nobody introduced them to me, nobody mentioned it. It just wasn't an option at these schools.

And I think there's a strong frustration I feel with knowing that ultimately, when it comes down to "Will I get through to Round 2?" and thoughts like that, I must acknowledge that from the outset, I was disadvantaged. I'm working against this disadvantage!! But when you've got 2 years to get into it (Before you physically can't compete anymore), going against people who've taken quite literally a DECADE for this same competition, you gotta be real at a point and say it's not going to happen.

I LOVE mature learning. I think mature learners are the GOATs, but this is one place where mature learning necessarily falters; When there's an Age Limit to your knowledge. Nobody cares if you can solve an olympiad problem at 30 - I mean, I care! But most don't - and ultimately, you can't apply that knowledge in any meaningful way.

Has anybody else struggled with this feeling? I guess it's just being systemically disadvantaged, but I'm not sure what remedies I can have for it. Obviously, I shouldn't compare myself to other people doing this, and should just focus on my journey. But my problem stems from wanting to be competitive, but unable to from circumstances out of my control.

I guess it's something I have to reclaim in Uni lol. But if anybody else has similar experiences, I'd love to hear them!