A medal winner at this year’s Tokyo Olympics auctioned her medal to help pay for a boy’s heart surgery, then the winner gave the medal back to her.
Polish javelin thrower Maria Andrejczyk pulled down a silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo games this year. That’s a lifetime accomplishment for any athlete, and nobody could blame Andrejczyk for framing the medal over her fireplace for the rest of her life.
But, she didn’t do that; instead, she opted to auction the priceless award off to save the life of a little boy who needed heart surgery.
In Polish, Andrejczyk revealed that the boy in question “has a serious heart defect, he needs an operation” and that “it is for him that I am auctioning off my Olympic silver medal.”
The athlete solicited auctions privately; in a subsequent post, she revealed that Polish supermarket chain Żabka was the winning bidder. In a beautiful twist, Żabka revealed that “the silver medal from Tokyo will stay with Ms. Maria” because she “showed how great she is.”
The grocery chain posted on its facebook page: “We were moved by the beautiful and extremely noble gesture of our Olympija girl, so we decided to support the collection of funds for the benefit of the boy who needed an operation. We also decided that the silver medal from Tokyo will stay with Ms. Maria, who showed how Great a Champion she is.”
In recent years there’s been a lot of fair criticism of “everybody gets a medal” culture. Yet in this case, everyone did get a medal—and they all deserved it.