Was Paris-Roubaix third-rate?

On Monday the cycling world hailed Tom Boonen’s victory in the Paris-Roubaix as one for the ages, on Wednesday the man he joined in the record books tells us that victory was third rate.

On Sunday Boonen equalled Roger de Vlaeminck's record of winning Paris-Roubaix four times. He also became the first man to win the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix double twice and the first man to win the quartet of cobbled classics in the same season: E3, Gent Wevelgem, Flanders and Roubaix.

Legendary stuff by any measure but today comes news that de Vlaeminck thinks Boonen's Paris-Roubaix victory came against a peloton he regarded as "third-rate".

Why? Because of the absence of one man, Fabian Cancellara, and a group of chasers that he claims was not up to scratch on the cobbles.

"I hope Cancellara participates next year, then we see a different race," de Vlaeminck said to Nieuwsblad.be. "I knew beforehand that he (Boonen) would be next to me (in career victories). Tom can not help it that this time he had no opposition. They were not second, but third-rate riders."

De Vlaeminck then went further.

"Take Pozzato, if you want to win, your task for the last hundred kilometres is to stick within an inch of Boonen's wheel. The competition provided ​​him with no obstacles and they probably couldn't have done any better than they did. For the Belgian fans, it was fantastic, but for the average, foreign cycling fans there was nothing to be seen, which is a sad affair. When he (Boonen) was 20 metres ahead, I already knew the outcome."

Not to blow our own horn, but we at Cycling Central also agreed that was the moment Boonen won Roubaix.

But we were not as disappointed as de Vlaeminck. As foreign fans we loved the audacity of the move and loved watching a true practitioner of the cobbled craft, almost always a Belgian, take it to the peloton in a masterclass of racing on the stones. It was a win for us too.

But this morning, my first reaction to de Vlaeminck's comments was this tweet.

You know the drill, old guy from a bygone era says things were tougher and better in his day.

But then I had a bit of a think, maybe de Vlaeminck is right. And who better to make those comments anyway?

We love the cobbled classics like tennis fans love Wimbledon, but maybe it's time to take a hard look at what they are in danger of becoming, a branch of the sport that represents a black and white era and one where the modern day practitioners are no match for those of the past - except for Tommeke.

A Wimbledon of cycling where today's winners don't have the beautiful game to navigate the surface lumps and divots.

De Vlaeminck may be right. Races like Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders could be in danger of becoming one or two-man races with declining skill sets among the rest of the peloton, over time.

Twitter: @Philip_Gomes