The story starts out with the dad telling the kid he had to be a professional in a sport. That's fucked up right off the bat. Oh hooray, he let him pick the sport he had to dedicate his life to becoming a pro in or risk disappointing his father while being separated from his mother and sisters by hours.Yep. Agreed. Although, let's not pretend that high school is a guaranteed fallback for a lot of people, either. We all know plenty of people in our lives that went to high school and ended up in pretty poor spots.
The life he lived as a child (pre-teen) actually seems pretty fucking awesome. Tons of focus on music, art, sports, activities, healthy eating, spending time with his father. I think that's probably better than the majority of us ever get to experience.
The one thing that stood out to me - aside from the things you mentioned - was that he and his father lived 2.5 hours away from his mother. The only way Zacha could see her was if she drove to see him on the weekends. It was glossed over, but the implications seems to be that his parents were together, but the plans for Zacha moved he and his father away from the rest of his family. It's one thing to structure Zachas life the way his father did, but it feels like something different to put Pavels relationship with the rest of his family at risk to do it.
As others have pointed out, this is a "nice" story cause Zacha happened to be physically gifted enough to make it work and doesn't appear to be totally psychologically fucked up by it like so many kids whose parents take them on this route.
Had he been born with basically any physical disadvantages (poor sight, poor hearing, bad bone or tendon structure that makes him more prone to injury or just physically inefficient, etc.), how does dad react when failure inevitably shows up at the door? What if Pavel DID decide he didn't like sports? What's dad's relationship with his daughters after apparently neglecting them for years to focus on his son?
As for the point about some people not doing well even if they went to high school, the probability of success for people who attend high school is orders of magnitude higher than someone who dedicates their childhood and teens to becoming a professional athlete. Pavel, Jr. even alludes to it in the article:
The guy made a lottery bet and it paid off - he even won the "my kid doesn't hate me for making him do this," parlay. Winning the parenting version of Powerball is not a good life plan, though.“A lot of them are not doing as well,” he said. “They also put everything on the card of playing hockey. And without the school, the system back home wasn’t good enough. They quit school and started playing hockey and it didn’t work out. … Those are also the pressures.”