Giorgia Villa helped Italy win its first medal in gymnastics since 1928. However, it was not her sporting success that made her famous worldwide – but rather strange pictures on the Internet.
Italian gymnast Giorgia Villa, who recently helped her country win its first medal in rhythmic gymnastics since 1928, is not only attracting attention with her athletic performance. Unusual photos of her eating parmesan cheese have also taken the internet by storm. She became a celebrity overnight and was portrayed by media around the world.
In the photos, Villa poses in her leotard next to giant wheels of Parmesan, performs a handstand over another Parmesan wheel and hugs her “best friend,” as she once called the cheese at a press appearance. Dozens of sponsored posts on Villa’s social media channels show her proudly displaying various forms of the hard cheese.
According to a report by the British Guardian, Villa had signed a sponsorship deal with the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium (PRC), the association that unites all producers of this cheese, three months before the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. Italian photographer Gabriele Seghizzi shot the pictures at the beginning of the collaboration, which are now going viral on social media.
Parmigiano Reggiano is also a partner of the current world number one in men’s tennis, Jannik Sinner, former NBA player Nico Mannion, Paralympic swimmer Giulia Ghiretti and fencer Matteo Neri. The association boasts that the Parmesan cheese, produced using a process dating back to the 13th century, is “suitable for a sports diet”. Some health experts agree, describing the cheese as “easily digestible due to the presence of digestible proteins and lipids, lactose-free, rich in calcium, with possible prebiotic and probiotic effects”.
Villa began her gymnastics career as a little girl. Her mother enrolled her in gymnastics classes “before I destroyed her whole house,” as Villa herself put it. Even when she started kindergarten, she knew that she would love this sport: “I left school and couldn’t wait to walk into that gym and feel free and happy while jumping and running,” she is quoted as saying by the Guardian.
This year, Villa’s team won the silver medal at the Olympic Games. In Paris, they were only defeated by the team of US superstar Simone Biles. “Biles and her teammates are fabulous gymnasts, what can I say?” said Villa. “Simone is from another planet. To see her jump and all her acrobatics up close is a unique privilege.”
