PARIS, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Italian gymnast Giorgia Villa has plenty to be happy about after she helped the Italian team take a silver medal behind the United States on Tuesday.
It was Italy's first Olympic team medal since 1928 and it has made Villa and her team-mates Angela Andreoli, Alice D'Amato, Manila Esposito and Elisa Iorio instant celebrities in their homeland.
The medal is also a vindication for Villa, who missed out on a place in Tokyo 2020 after suffering an ankle injury two weeks before the start of the Games.
However, the champion of the 2018 Youth Games is already well known for a completely different reason. She is one of the faces that helps to promote Parmesan cheese.
Three months before the Games, Villa signed an endorsement with the most famous of Italian cheeses and perhaps the best-known cheese in the world.
The communique announcing the agreement hailed how it confirmed "how the combination of Parmigiano Reggiano and the world of sport is indissoluble in terms of authenticity, quality and energetic value, both in sporting activity and in correct nutrition".
Fans have begun to repost some of her publicity shots, in which she poses hugging a huge wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano, doing the splits over four wheels of cheese and vaulting over cheese.
Her uneven bars routine was a key factor in Italy's silver medal and 21-year-old Villa is likely to be "big cheese" for quite a while yet and that's something to ponder next time you want something to grate onto your spaghetti.
