When we call Cristina Tonetti, she is leaving for Belgium, and perhaps it's not a coincidence that while waiting at the Orio airport gate, she begins to tell us about the journey she has faced in recent months. We have always been in touch with her, through messages and jokes, and to respect the moment and her recovery, we chose to wait until everything was over, or rather, until everything truly began again. Several months have passed since the Brescian athlete from Laboral took her last flight, an unusual thing for someone who lives cycling, but a pericarditis forced her to stop, to touch with her own hands the daily life she had lost the habit of and start over.

We need to take a step back; it actually all began in February. Cristina wasn't feeling at her best, her legs were turning but not as they should, her heart rate was irregular, and one day in March, during the Sanremo reconnaissance, she realized something was truly wrong. Tests and medical visits began, and the result came quite quickly: it was pericarditis, and absolute rest was required. "I had been experiencing irregular heartbeats for a while and was especially very tired, and the tests left no room for doubt. Pericarditis is an inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart, most likely a complication of an influenza virus I had in early February that I had underestimated. The only way to treat it is to rest," Cristina explains to tuttobiciweb. In the first month, I could practically do nothing, not even a simple walk. Then in mid-April, I started with non-competitive activity, and only in mid-May did I seriously start again. It's strange to say, but in some way, the diagnosis reassured me. I hadn't been feeling right for some time, something was blocking me, and finally having an explanation made me understand that it wasn't me, but there was a real problem that could be solved."

A few months ago, we told a similar story with Carlotta Cipressi as the protagonist, forced to stop her 2024 season, and it's precisely to her that Cristina wrote to compare notes, exchange opinions, and understand what she would have to face. "Talking to Carlotta helped me a lot, reassured me, and I was able to compare notes with someone who had already been through it and, most importantly, had come out of it. Honestly, I never really panicked, I had no anxiety, I simply knew there was a problem and that I needed to stop. Heart problems run in the family, but among women, the incidence of heart attacks or similar issues is very low, so I was always calm. I could do nothing but wait, and so I found myself living a daily life that I had practically lost or had never even experienced," the Brianza native explains to us, who faced everything analytically, head-held-high, focusing on the goal of returning rather than the need to stay still. There were certainly tough moments, yet thanks to many people by her side, she never lost her smile. Such is the case with Eleonora Camilla Gasparrini, a special friend with whom she raced in the national team and in the junior category; in the 8 years they've known each other, they had never had the chance to spend a birthday together, and they finally did.

During these long months of stop, necessarily setting the bicycle aside, Cristina rediscovered small things, spent time with her family, and took the opportunity to reconnect with people she never had time to see between trips and training. She experienced life from the other side, not as an athlete but as a normal person, and thus resumed her studies, beginning to create a plan B for a potential future after cycling. Always in contact with the team, she was never short of affection on social media, neither when she explained her heart problem nor when the Basque team announced her return. She was overwhelmed with comments, messages, and words of support.

Now it's time to return. Today, Cristina will be at the start of the Antwerp Port Epic Ladies in Belgium. There's a bit of emotion, but she feels good and is at peace with herself. "I'm returning to racing almost peacefully, with a completely different spirit compared to other times. Usually, I was very nervous, at home I did everything to the millimeter, giving importance to training hours, convinced that doing one hour more or less would change the entire season. Then I found myself unable to go out on the bike and realized I needed to focus less on the detail, look more at the process as a whole. Only by doing so do you realize that you can make sacrifices all year and still arrive at the race full of doubts and get blocked. In some way, what happened, the long stop, has somewhat resized me, made me give importance to the right things, made me rediscover a tranquility I had lost. In some way, I've grown," she tells us, making us understand how this forced stop actually granted her time to see the world from a different perspective, perhaps a better one, but certainly different.

Cristina makes no promises, there are no real plans, only the desire to start again. She'll see how it goes, step by step. For now, it's time to become a cyclist again, perhaps with a different, more mature look, but always with the hunger that has always distinguished her.