Cristina Tonetti will leave Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi at the end of the 2026 season to join St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93 on a two-year contract, becoming the latest Italian addition to the French team’s developing 2027 roster.
The 24-year-old has spent the past three seasons with Laboral Kutxa after joining from Top Girls Fassa Bortolo in 2024. She will now move to St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93 through to the end of 2028, with the team planning to use her combination of finishing speed and willingness to race aggressively while also giving her a lead-out role alongside fellow new signing Martina Fidanza.
Tonetti becomes the third Italian confirmed by St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93 for next season following Gaia Segato and Fidanza. The recruitment comes as the French organisation prepares to focus its professional future around the women’s team from 2027.
“I’m really happy and grateful for the opportunity to join St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93 next season,” Tonetti said. “I really like this project and, from my very first contact with the team, I was impressed by the importance the team places on people and the personal side.
“I felt the need for a change and I believe St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93 is the perfect team for me to continue progressing and growing. I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone and sharing this new adventure together!”
Tonetti brings several different options to St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93
Tonetti has developed into a useful all-round presence rather than being restricted to one type of race. She has enough speed to contest reduced finishes, can work in a lead-out and has repeatedly shown a willingness to get ahead of the peloton when a race offers an opportunity.
Her first professional victory came at the 2025 Grote Prijs Yvonne Reynders, where she attacked late and held off the chasing group by six seconds. Earlier in her career she finished second at the 2023 Gran Premio della Liberazione, fourth at La Classique Morbihan and third overall at the 2022 Vuelta a Formosa Femenina.
The 2026 season has brought further opportunities at a higher level. Tonetti finished fourth on a stage of the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya Femenina and seventh on a stage of the Women’s WorldTour Vuelta a Burgos, while also lining up at the Giro d’Italia Women with Laboral Kutxa.
Her ProCyclingUK rider profile charts a career that began with ASD VO2 Team Pink before two seasons at Top Girls Fassa Bortolo and the move to Laboral Kutxa.
General manager Stephan Gaudry believes that experience will give the French squad several options.
“At 24, Cristina already has great experience in the professional peloton,” Gaudry said. “She was looking for a new challenge and I’m very happy to welcome her for the next two seasons.
“She has a strong turn of speed but can also get into breakaways, as she showed at the 2024 Tour de France, where she wore the mountains jersey. She will also play a lead-out role for Martina Fidanza, whom she already knows well.”
Tour de France Femmes breakaway gave Tonetti a wider audience
Tonetti’s most recognisable moment came on the opening stage of the 2024 Tour de France Femmes between Rotterdam and The Hague.
Laboral Kutxa had entered the race as an invited Continental team and made the mountains classification an immediate target. Tonetti attacked alone around 80 kilometres from the finish and collected the available Queen of the Mountains points, earning the first polka-dot jersey of that year’s Tour.
“I’m not really a climber, but I did my best and I will just enjoy having the jersey,” she said after the stage. With no mountains points available on Stages 2 or 3, Tonetti remained in the jersey through the opening part of the race before the classification changed once the Tour reached hillier terrain.
She ultimately finished the 2024 Tour 100th overall and 22nd in the mountains classification, but the result was less important than the way she used the opportunity. Tonetti had entered a WorldTour race with an invited team and immediately put Laboral Kutxa into one of the Tour’s classification jerseys.
That willingness to race proactively appears to be one of the qualities St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93 have identified alongside her speed.
A familiar Italian partnership with Martina Fidanza
Tonetti’s planned lead-out work for Fidanza gives the signing a more specific sporting role than simply adding another experienced rider.
Fidanza is one of Italy’s strongest track and road sprinters and gives St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93 a clear finishing option for flatter races in 2027. Tonetti’s ability to survive harder racing before contributing late should make her useful when the finish is too selective for a conventional sprint train.
The pair already know one another, reducing some of the adjustment normally required when building a new lead-out structure. Tonetti can also be given opportunities of her own on days when the race suits an aggressive breakaway or reduced-group finish rather than a pure bunch sprint.
That flexibility fits the direction St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93 have been taking with recent recruitment. The team has already strengthened considerably since earning Women’s ProTeam status, bringing in riders for the Classics, stage races and sprints rather than building around one leader. The organisation’s decision to concentrate its professional resources on the women’s programme from 2027 makes the current transfer window especially important.
Tonetti will arrive with three seasons of experience at Laboral Kutxa, two Grand Tour appearances at the Giro and Tour de France Femmes already behind her, and a first professional victory secured.
For St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93, the attraction is that she does not have to be used in only one way.
