Not necessarily... haven't listened to Xande's talk, but my sentiment is that you rather might need elite training partners/coach to get that bump to elite level of knowledge/skill, but for the actual comp prep, at your current level, you can very well do within a lesser team. At least Braulio has talked how he did his prep for ADCC in UK when he only had whites & blues to spar with, and he won the damn thing. (There is at least another similar top level example that escapes me...) So at least if you're pretty high level already, you can do well with training with lower level partners and still win at the elite comps. Or at least used to... these examples are a decade old and the game has been upped considerably. :)

Tommy Langaker & Espen Mathiesen are examples of training in a very remote small gym and doing very well in the international scene at black belt level (ofc they traveled but mostly trained at Haugesund by themselves).

The openness in this day & age makes it easier to get information about the latest positions etc. without studying directly with people who are experts in them.