Does meritocracy always have to be in the shape of power law?

Isn't the power law evidence that it's not really about merit?

That is, when you measure individual performance (how fast they run, how tall they are, IQ, ...) it is almost always some kind of bell curve.

There are people who have more than a million times the assets of other people but it seems unthinkable that somebody is really a million times more productive, rather a person like that is getting a share of the productivity of 10 million other people.