Polish Olympic hero Maria Andrejczyk auctions off her Tokyo silver medal for £130,000 to help fund eight-month old boy’s life-saving heart surgery after javelin star beat bone cancer in 2018
- Olympian Maria Andrejczyk has auctioned off her silver medal from Tokyo
- The Polish javelin thrower wanted to help a stranger in need by raising money
- The athlete chose to help fund life-saving surgery for an eight-month old boy
- The 25-year-old beat bone cancer after being diagnosed with the illness in 2018
Polish Olympic athlete Maria Andrejczyk has auctioned off her silver medal from Tokyo to help fund life-saving heart surgery for an eight-month old boy.
The javelin thrower beat bone cancer after being diagnosed in 2018 and went on to win a silver medal at the Games in Japan following a fourth-place finish at Rio 2016.
Andrejczyk said she wanted to put her success to good use by auctioning off her medal to help a stranger in need, encouraging members of the public to put forward suggestions.
The athlete chose a fundraiser for Miloszek, a young Polish boy who requires heart surgery at Stanford hospital in the United States.
The 25-year-old wrote on her social media pages: ‘It didn’t take me long to decide, it was the first fundraiser I entered and I knew it was the right one. Miloszek has a serious heart defect and is in need of surgery.
‘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.
Polish Olympic athlete Maria Andrejczyk has auctioned off her silver medal from Tokyo to help fund life-saving heart surgery for an eight-month old boy
The javelin thrower beat bone cancer after being diagnosed in 2018 and went on to win a silver medal at the Games in Japan
‘And in this way, I also want to help. It’s for him that I am auctioning my Olympic silver medal.’
The fundraiser for Miloszek was looking for 1.5million Polish zloty, just over £280,000, and Andrejczyk hoped to fund half of that amount by auctioning her medal.
Andrejczyk has now confirmed that Polish convenience store Zabka have won the auction, which has raised £130,000. Further contributions have now taken the figure past the £140,000 target.
Andrejcyk chose to raise money for Miloszek, a young Polish boy who requires heart surgery at Stanford hospital in USA and the fundraiser is now at 90 per cent of its target
Writing on Facebook, the athlete said: ‘The winner, and at the same time, the company I will be eternally grateful to is the company Zabka.
‘It is with the greatest pleasure to give you Zabka this 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.’
Zabka praised Andrejczyk’s ‘beautiful and extremely noble gesture’ and insisted that she keeps the medal.
As quoted by The Times, Andrejczyk also told Polish television: ‘The true value of a medal always remains in the heart.
‘A medal is only an object, but it can be of great value to others.
‘This silver can save lives, instead of collecting dust in a closet. That is why I decided to auction it to help sick children.’
Australia’s Kelsy Lee Barber (left) took bronze while China’s Shiyinh Liu (centre) won gold
Miloszka’s fundraising page is now at 90 per cent of its target with more donations continuing to flood in.
Andrejczyk, who missed out on a medal at Rio by 2cm, was the favourite to take gold in the javelin event at Tokyo but was unable to match her personal best of 71.40, which is the third-longest throw hurled by a woman in the javelin.
But this time she was only able to reach 64.61m, giving China’s Shiyinh Liu the chance to take gold with a throw of 66.34m. Australian Kelsy Lee Barber took bronze with a distance of 64.56m.