Maria Andrejczyk auctions silver medal to help an infant get heart surgery
Polish Olympian Maria Andrejczyk auctions off medal to help with infant’s heart surgery, but winning bidder won’t accept
Polish javelin thrower and Olympian Maria Andrejczyk has auctioned off her silver medal to help raise money for an infant’s heart surgery, but the winning bidder has refused to accept her medal.
Andrejczyk, 25, took to Facebook last week to announce that she would be auctioning off her silver medal to help raise funds for 8-month-old Miloszek Malysa, of Poland, who was in need of life-saving heart 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,” she wrote in Polish on her page.
“And in this way, I also want to help. It’s for him that I am auctioning my Olympic silver medal.”
On Monday, she confirmed on Instagram that Żabka, a Polish supermarket chain, won the auction with a bid of $125,000. The money raised will allow the boy to get the necessary surgery at Stanford University Medical Center.
In a surprising twist of events, Żabka decided to give the medal back to Andrejczyk.
Andrejczyk, who missed an Olympic medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics by 2 centimeters, suffered from a shoulder injury in 2017 and was diagnosed with bone cancer in 2018. She went through recovery to make a comeback and win her first Olympic medal in Tokyo earlier this month.
