People actively look to credit other people's success to anything but their work all of the time. Just this week, such a webpage was heavily discussed on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6546325

The submission attributes Bill Gates's success first and foremost to his grandparents and parents. This is part of a very common pattern of attributing success to everything but work.

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5204329