What is 'athletic'? Strength, power and endurance are the only 3 first order athletic traits.
Co-ordination, balance and agility are all second order traits that are based on the first order traits.
and what about speed? It is the common denominator in so many sports, the faster you can do something well/consistently (all things equal) the better you are at it generally - see; boxing, sprinting, swinging a baseball, swimming, cycling, swinging a racquet, kicking a ball, throwing a ball.
An athlete is not confined to bodybuilding. A bodybuilder is just that, a builder, he does not have to be able to run fast, or throw hard. You could be a world class body builder and never run a mile or sprint a 100m or be able to throw a ball with any coordination. Give me a world class body builder, or monfils or nadal, and then make them do every athletic event, and participate in every sport, and the bodybuilder would be laughable in so many off the top of my head;
baseball, basketball, tennis, soccer, 100m, 200m all the metres of the world at running, javelin would be interesting, a tennis player has a very strong arm and core that serving is similar to, NFL wide-reciever monfils would be scary/sampras could have thrown that hail mary with ease.
'Athlete' for me, are the attributes that make one proficient at a physical task, not just the building blocks of strength on a weight rack.
10 000 years ago athletes were prized because they could throw a spear 30 metres and hit the deer, out run and tire other animals, wrestle, punch, kick, not because they had define glutes in a bikini. - they had precision and agility and speed and coordination. Strength was important but it is not the be all end all, it is a facet.