Although this guy is young, he's been at it several times. He is likely one of the most experienced among contestants.<p>I think it is a good example of 'practice makes perfect' and '10,000-hour rule' for world-class expertise building. (If you count all the hours with math training as well--though I don't know how much time he spent on math & com sci together.)
Looking at the country list of gold medalists in the bottom-right box, there seems to be high correlation between the nurturing and availability of very top talents and the rate of economic development of a nation.
No doubt. Belarussians are very serious about informatics olympiad these days.<p>Their "Informatics faciltative of the Young Firefighter Club of Mazyr" team is known to beat moscow and saint-petersburg teams in north-east european informatics competition, coming third.
And Mazyr a tiny city in the middle of nowhere, if you're curious.<p>More on this topic (in russian): <a href="http://offline.computerra.ru/2008/730/354607/" rel="nofollow">http://offline.computerra.ru/2008/730/354607/</a>