[thinkr]

Not to take away from your comment, but I wanted to highlight another sport that requires similar sacrifice at an early age, which is the male dominated sport of F1 racing. Many top drivers are the result of training and competing at 7-8 years of age in kart racing. I would say they "peak" later than a ballerina/gymnast but require the same early sacrifice to be a top athlete.

[Ididntdothis]

You don’t make many physical sacrifices in racing though. You have to be in good shape but You don’t have to go to extremes like gymnasts do. There actually would be a big advantage if you brought up racers with stunted growth that are short and weigh little but thank god this doesn’t seem to be happening.

[andrepd]

But you don't have to "sacrifice" anything to participate in kart racing. It's not even a physically demanding activity. All you need is enough money to compete, but that's the parent's responsibility at that age, so not even that.

[lazyant]

oh yes, also for car racing the financial sacrifice from parents that are not rich.

And the sacrifice for the whole family in terms of time and money when one kid in any sport is good enough to go on travel teams (in the US/Canada this level is not very high) and the whole routine of the family around weekends and holidays are planned around those traveling sports events.

[aidenn0]

Most pro baseball players play little league as well, but the peak physical demands are later