Roughly the following is true.

Talent * Effort = performance

I could never be an Olympic anything, I don't have the body for it. But I am pretty good at math.

To say that talent is over rated makes about as much sense as saying effort is over rated.

True, and Card acknowledges the place of talent in performance. The message I got from the essay though is that we too narrowly define what a talent is. In gifted and talented education there are several areas of acknowledged talent. True, a child can be talented artistically, or athletically. But they can also be talented academically, financially, socially, emotionally, spiritually, and in several other ways. We do well to recognize and encourage talents of all kinds. Its a shame when someone does not recognize their value, their contribution to the world, because their talents are not of the type we generally recognize as talents. In fact, the most important talents are probably those that do not get recognized as such. I would argue that the most talented person ever was Christ, who as far as I know never hit a ball, or performed a concert.