After more than 70 years in French cycling, St Michel – Preference Home – Auber93 is turning the page on one of the sport’s longest-running men’s projects.
The club announced this week that beginning in 2027, it will focus all of its professional resources on its women’s program, which currently races at UCI Women’s ProTeam level. The women’s team happens to be the home of two Canadian riders: national champ Alison Jackson and Clara Emond. Until just recently, Simone Boilard was also on the team. However, the Quebec rider has decided to retire from the sport after battling illness for several years.
As far as the news, the move effectively ends the men’s side that became one of France’s best-known second-division outfits through the 1990s and early 2000s.
For decades, Auber 93 carved out a reputation as one of French cycling’s scrappiest teams, a small-budget outfit that still found its way onto the Tour de France start line, even winning a stage in 1996 through Cyril Saugrain. (The team’s name is a reference to where the team began in Aubervilliers, in 1993.)
Times changing in pro cycling
But the economics of cycling have changed dramatically, and the club admitted the old model no longer works.
“The demands of modern cycling continue to rise every day,” the organization said in a statement. “The successes of yesterday are no longer achievable under today’s conditions.”
Rather than continue trying to fund parallel projects, the club has chosen to concentrate its energy, and its sponsors’ backing, behind the women’s squad that stepped into the professional ranks in 2022.
That same year, the team lined up at the reborn women’s Tour de France. It has returned every season since.
Stephan Gaudry, general manager of St Michel–Preference Home–Auber 93, called the decision emotional but necessary.
A long history in the sport
“I am deeply attached to the history of our team and our club,” Gaudry said. “We are closing a chapter spanning several decades, during which we competed in the world’s greatest races, won a stage of the Tour de France, and had the honour of wearing the national championship jersey.”
Gaudry said the club believes a single, focused professional project gives it a better chance of surviving, and growing, in the current cycling landscape.
“Our adventure is not over,” he said. “It continues as it always has: with courage, humility and ambition.”
The club said its amateur…
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