After the United States displayed more Olympic dominance at the Winter Games in Milan, a story resurfaced of self-sacrifice and the hopes for humanity in which a medalist auctioned off her second-place silver medal in order to raise money for a child battling cancer.
The wonderful story of Polish Olympic silver medalist Maria Andrejczyk has its origins in Tokyo, where the three-time Olympian was competing in the javelin throw amidst the pandemic-altered quadrennial event. Just five days after finishing in the top three (the only time she would show among her three appearances), she heard about the story of a young Polish child whose family needed to raise money for travel and care.
Aside from their shared Polish heritage, Andrejczyk herself knew what a battle with cancer was like. She survived a 2017 bout with bone cancer in her shoulder. In 2021, she read a social media post from the parents of 8-month-old baby Miłoszek Małysa, who needed heart surgery in the United States.
Explaining her decision at one point, she said “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.” With that in mind, she put up her hard-earned medal for auction. In the end, it sold for $125,000 to a Polish convenience store chain, which amazingly gave the medal back to her after posting the winning bid.
In a post to her own Facebook page, the Olympian wrote in her native Polish about the auction. “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. And in this way, I also want to help. It’s for him that I am auctioning my Olympic silver medal.”
The Polish baby would eventually be able to fly to the United States and receive surgery at California’s Stanford University Medical Center. For a few months, it looked as if everyone’s charity and world-renowned medical care would be enough; tragically, however, the boy died at the age of around 15 months after having returned home and showed initial signs of improvement.
“Maria Magdalena Andrejczyk, born 1996, is a Polish track and field athlete who competes in the javelin throw. She is a three-time Olympian and won the silver medal in the javelin throw event at the 2020 Summer Olympics. Andrejczyk is also a European Team Championships silver medalist and European Junior Championships gold medalist. Her personal best throw of 71.40 m, set in 2021, is the Polish record and ranks her third on the women’s world all-time list,” Wikipedia writes of her.
Featured image: Michał Laudy, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons