Three years ago Italian gymnast Giorgia Villa was cruelly denied her first shot at Olympic glory when she injured her ankle less than two weeks before getting on the plane for Tokyo. On Tuesday, the 21-year-old from Brescia helped Italy to their first medal in artistic gymnastics since 1928, teaming with Angela Andreoli, Alice D’Amato, Manila Esposito and Elisa Iorio to win a historic silver behind the United States.

The Italian quintet have become overnight celebrities back home, where they have been dubbed le fate d’argento (the silver fairies). But Villa’s profile has managed to transcend sport in the days since her landmark medal thanks to a viral tweet which unearthed her endorsement deal with parmesan cheese.

The images speak for themselves. There’s Villa posing in her leotard next to a wheel of parmesan. There’s Villa seated proudly with three wheels of parmesan, performing an aerial cartwheel over a wheel of parmesan, doing the splits on four wheels of, yep, parmesan. There’s Villa giving a warm embrace to her “best friend” – you guessed it – a wheel of parmesan. More than 20 sponsored posts across Villa’s social media channels have featured her showing off wheels, blocks and bite-size packets of the hard cheese.

Three months before the Tokyo Olympics, Villa signed a sponsorship deal with the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium (PRC), the association which oversees production and unites all producers of the cheese. A press release hailed the partnership as “confirming 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”.

She is not the first athlete to get in bed with Big Parma. According to the Italian marketing agency Impresa e Sport, Parmigiano Reggiano has also partnered with current world No 1 men’s tennis player Jannik Sinner, former NBA point guard Nico Mannion and Paralympic swimmer Giulia Ghiretti and the fencer Matteo Neri. The association boasts that Parmesan cheese, which is made through a manufacturing process dating to the 13th century, is “suitable for a sports diet”. Some health experts agree, describing it as “easy digested, for the presence of ready to use proteins and lipids, lactose free, rich in calcium, with possible prebiotic and probiotic effect”.

Villa’s mother signed her up for gymnastics lessons “before I destroyed her whole house” due to her high energy and activity level. “I had just started nursery school, but I immediately understood that I would love that sport with all my being,” she said. “I left school and, still wearing my pink apron, I couldn’t wait to enter that gym and jump and run feeling free and happy.”

Since the age of 11 she has been schooled at the Italian Gymnastics Federation’s International Academy of Brescia, training six days a week. Villa no doubt caught the eye of the PRC’s power brokers after the 2019 world championships where she competed on all four apparatus to lead Italy to a surprise bronze, the country’s first team medal since 1950.

No longer able to compete in the all-around due to a recurring back injury, Villa’s clean uneven bars routine on Tuesday played no small part in Italy’s historic medal. But it’s Villa’s magnetic enthusiasm that has enamoured the throngs of media who have packed the Bercy Arena over the past week. She could hardly contain her excitement after Sunday’s qualifying round, where she performed before a celebrity-flecked crowd that included Tom Cruise, Lady Gaga, Jessica Chastain, Ariana Grande and Anna Wintour.

“Biles and her teammates are fabulous gymnasts, what can I say?” Villa said. “Simone is from another planet. Seeing her vault and all her acrobatics from so close up is a unique privilege.”

It was unclear at time of writing which cheese variety Biles prefers.