A Polish javelin thrower who won the Silver medal in the recent Tokyo Olympics has auctioned off her medal to raise money to pay for a little boy’s surgery.
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Winning an Olympic medal is a lifelong dream for many athletes who have to put in a lot of sweat and tears to achieve it. But Maria Andrejczyk had no qualms in auctioning off her first Olympic medal for a good cause.
Just a few days after winning a silver medal at the Tokyo Summer Games, the 25-year-old announced on Facebook that she was raising $190,000 for Polish child Miloszek Małysa, 8 months, so that he could go to the U.S. for life-saving surgery.
“Miloszek has a serious heart defect, he needs an operation,” she wrote on Aug. 11. “He already has a head start from Kubus — a boy who didn’t make it in time but whose amazing parents decided to pass on the funds they collected.”
She added, “And in this way, I also want to help. It’s for him that I am auctioning my Olympic silver medal.” Miloszek’s donation page hopes to raise over $380,000, half of which Andrejczyk, who is a bone cancer survivor, will contribute.
On Monday, Andrejczyk announced that Polish convenience store chain Zabka won the auction and contributed more than her goal.
“We have the winner of the auction!” the Olympian shared. “On Friday I received this wonderful information, and due to the fact that you dears have already done wonders and joint forces have paid more than the equivalent of the initial medal to the Mi łooszka account – I decided to end the auction so that our Mi łoosz will receive the whole amount as soon as possible and can fly to the USA.”
Andrejczyk said she was “eternally grateful” to the company and honored to give them her medal, “which for me is a symbol of struggle, faith and pursuit of dreams despite many odds. I hope that for you it will be a symbol of the life we fought for together,” she wrote.
After her announcement, Zabka tweeted that they actually want Andrejczyk to hold onto her special hardware. “We were moved by the beautiful and extremely noble gesture of our Olympian, so we decided to support the fundraiser for Miłoszek,” the company tweeted.
They added, “We decided that from Tokyo will stay with Maria! We admire [Andrejczyk] and we are glad that we were able to contribute.” The child’s donation page has raised nearly $346,000 for his heart surgery.
