I’ll try to be generous and imagine that she thinks it’s easier on you to hear bad news from her than to go out and actually fail.

That’s the only remotely humane explanation I can come up with. But this is not at all what I would do. If my kid was enthusiastic about something, I would help them, let them fail, and tell them if they did their best and let them know they can keep trying.

I never tell my kids they are bad at something. I will tell them if they haven’t been practicing enough, or if others have practiced more than them. But that’s to help them understand that it’s about the effort you put in, not “how good you are.”

It does sound like you have a habit of rushing in with grand ambitions. “I’m going to make it to nationals,” etc. My kids do this as well. They learn how to solve a Rubik’s cube and then suddenly they’re out to break the world record. For whatever reason, it’s no enough for them to just solve the cube for fun, or just work on improving their own times. I guess it’s because kids don’t yet have fully formed self-esteem and are always looking for outside validation to prop them up.

You might benefit from thinking about what you get out of the sport and competition specifically.