I never ever equated contests and the pokeathelon in the same criteria.
One is just a handful of mini-games, and the other actually uses the pokemon's moves and status you get by making poffin/pokeblocks.
If this was an extension of the dancing/dress up part of DPPt contests, but not the ONLY part of it, I would be ecstatic! But it doesn't look like it.
I liked having a strategy to contests! It just takes some work to get some good poffins on a pokemon, play around with the dress up, and just a little mini-game with the button dancing, but the real part I loved was the move times. You had to use your brain and you couldn't "master" it like you can mini-games, there was a little bit of a challenge.