Maria Andrejczyk, who won silver at Tokyo, auctions medal to save infant's life. Here's what happened next ...

This young Polish javelin thrower has put her debut Olympic medal to good use, just weeks after winning it at Tokyo. Maria Andrejczyk, a track and field athlete from Poland, won a silver at the women's javelin event at the Olympics.

The 25-year-old however chose to part with her prized win to raise money for an eight-month-old infant. Andrejczyk came across the story of Miloszek Malysa, a native of Poland, who needs urgent surgery for a serious heart ailment.

The family, after being refused by several European hospitals for the surgery, has set their hopes on the Stanford University Medical Center in the US to perform the life-saving surgery. However, the cost of the surgery is $385,000 and the family is running an online fundraiser for their child.


Andrejczyk took to Facebook to announce that she would be auctioning her silver medal to raise funds for the cause.

"I didn't think about it for a long time, it was the first fundraiser I went to and I knew it was the right one," Andrejczyk wrote in the post, last week.


The athlete once again took to the social network to share that the auction was complete.

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A post shared by Maria M. Andrejczyk (@m.andrejczyk)

Polish convenience store chain Zabka Polska was the winner with a bid of $125,000. After the close of the auction, Zabka had a grand gesture of its own as it said it would let Andrejczyk keep the medal.


A cancer survivor, Andrejczyk was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer, in 2018. Having finished fourth at the 2016 Rio Olympics, she fought cancer and bounced back to finish second at Tokyo.