I wanted athletics and acrobatics.
Wouldn't you rather feel like a part of the world you're playing in, instead of feeling like some kid who found a cheat code that lets you outrun everything?
Including athletics and acrobatics and not "feeling like some kid who found a cheat code that lets you outrun everything" are not mutually exclusive. The skills could well have been balanced instead of eliminated.
The previous ES games were classic, but it doesn't mean nothing about them was bad. Let's keep the stupid aspects out of Skyrim.
The much better way to "keep the stupid aspects out of Skyrim" would be to alter them so that they're no longer stupid. Simply throwing them away is the cheap and lazy way out.
This recurring notion that we can either have one thing or another thing - that, for instance, we can either have "stupid" athletics and acrobatics or NO athletics and acrobatics - is poison. It's the sort of misleading propaganda that's fed to us by politicians. Beth should be above that, and people shouldn't fall for it.