Italian campione can mean either "champion" or "sample"

Champion is campeón in Spanish, champion in French, and campione in Italian. Sample is muestra in Spanish, échantillon in French, and campione in Italian. Only in Italian does the same word form take these two very different meanings. Is it because two different words happen to be spelled the same? No. Italian campione truly is one single word, from Latin campionem (“fighter”), and cognate with English and French champion, Spanish campeón. So how do we reconcile these two distinct meanings of Italian campione?

Here is an except from Learning Italian Words Through Etymology and Mnemonics (with minor changes):

According to Kruskal and Mosteller, two statisticians, the word initially meant “fighter”, then “champion”, and then “a sample of merchandise presumably as champion of the whole”. Here's my example to clarify their reasoning. When we say John Doe represents his team, it can mean that he’s a very good player in his team and so can represent the team (as a champion does), or that he’s closest to the average in his team so he represents a typical member the best (as a statistical sample does). The two senses conflate and we end up with one word that means either “champion” or “(statistical) sample” depending on the context.