New York, Aug. 18, (tca/dpa/GNA) – An Olympic silver medalist from Poland put her medal up for auction to help pay for an 8-month-old baby’s heart surgery, but the winning bidder turned the tables and let her keep it.
Javelin thrower Maria Andrejczyk won one of her country’s 14 medals in Tokyo, and she was determined to help a stranger in some way, according to her Facebook page.
Andrejczyk, 25, discovered a fundraiser for little Miloszek Malysa, who suffers from a rare heart condition and will need surgery to survive. She decided to auction the medal and donate the money to Miloszek’s family.
Polish convenience store chain Zabka Polska ponied up 125,000 dollars as the winning bid, and then said in a Facebook post that it would let Andrejczyk keep the medal.
The fundraiser for Miloszek on a Polish GoFundMe-type site was more than 90-per-cent complete as of Tuesday night.
Andrejczyk finished fourth in the javelin competition at the Rio 2016 Olympics. In 2018, she was diagnosed with cancer, but battled back to win silver in Tokyo.