The amount of effort required to simply compete in the Olympics is extensive, primarily due to the incentive that athletes have when it comes to winning a medal.
However, in the case of Piotr Malachowski, a Polish discus thrower, the value of a child’s overall quality of life was something that he considered more important. As a result, he ended up auctioning off the medal he won during the recent Olympics in Brazil. Malachowski won a silver medal for Poland, matching the silver that he had previously won during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
However, after hearing of the plight of four-year-old Olek Szymanski, he decided to part with his most recent medal. The reason was because Szymanski was in desperate need of surgery to stop the spread of retinoblastoma, a form of eye cancer. Due to the issue that the only hospital in the world capable of performing such surgery was in New York, the Szymanski family was unable to fund the trip and the surgery, a total cost that was estimated at $126,000.
Szymanski’s mother had contacted Malachowski in the hopes that he could simply help with additional fundraising. At the time, only one-third of the amount needed had been raised.
Yet when Malachowski’s medal was auctioned off on social media, the amount paid covered the remainder of the treatment. The winning bidder were siblings Dominika and Sebastian Kulczyk, part of Poland’s richest family, with a net worth that’s estimated at $3.5 billion.
