I think I generally agree with you that success at the highest level in sports often comes down to having some sort of genetic advantage for that sport. Two people can work equally hard at basketball, but if one’s 5’8” and the other is 6’6”, it’s not hard to guess which will have more success.
Which brings me to a point of discomfort with this sort of article.
I suspect there is a tradeoff here. For every person that wins an Olympic medal, there are probably thousands who were pushed equally hard and didn’t. What happens to them?
By focusing on the extreme success stories, we might be overlooking the immense costs of pushing a child so hard and then having them not win Olympic medals. I’m more interested in those stories and how those people are doing.
Most of us aren’t going to be elite level athletes, executives, doctors, engineer, etc. For most people, I suspect it’s more important to be competent at their job while maintaining healthy relationships with family, friends, and the community around them. That, I think, is the argument for having more “unstructured time” for children that this post is arguing against. That’s the time in which children may be better able to work on those social skills.
What does it take to make an exceptional human being?
I didn't know much about Eileen Gu before reading this article. She is an olympic gold medalist in skiing, speaks 2 languages (English and Chinese?), scored a 1580 on the SAT, and was also an accomplished distance runner and piano player.
My own childhood involved a lot of training for sports I wasn't very good at, lessons in instruments I also wasn't very good at, and studying for tests that I did pretty well at but rarely got perfect scores on. My parents were not task masters in the way Gu's mother apparently is.
I really think the key to having an exceptional child (not having children myself) is identifying their strengths and working with that. Gu was obviously an extraordinarily gifted athlete -- in my experience, starting with a baseline of innate talent is essential to winning at the highest levels in sport.
I don't want to argue that everything comes down to genetics or innate genius or talent. Hard work and discipline is necessary to exploit talent, and you can start with some pretty mediocre beginnings and become very proficient with enough effort. However, there was no amount of work that I could have done to be a champion skier.
I'm not sure where the balance is. Being able to play is also important.
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I agree with the importance of developing social skills. One complaint I have seen online of Eileen Gu (I don't know that much about her and have no strong opinions here) is that she can rub some people the wrong way. She is extremely confident, and can come across as arrogant in her interviews. She's earned the right to be proud of her accomplishments many times over, but being outwardly humble is something you learn in elementary school if you want people to like you.
As far as the cost of pushing someone who then does not win Olympic medals:
One really good example I can think of is Katelyn Ohashi who as a young teenager was slated to be the best gymnast in the world. At one point she even beat Simone Biles in one of the national gymnastics competitions. But after a series of injuries and becoming extremely burned out she stepped away from the elite gymnastics route. She returned to gymnastics when she attended university at UCLA.
I don't mean to downplay what Ohashi has accomplished. Being a gymnast at her level is still incredibly impressive; many young women would give a kidney for that level of achievement. But, she paid for her career with some pretty serious injuries and intense unhappiness.