Remember When: Olympic Athlete Sold Her Medal To Help Baby Who Needed Heart Transplant

Olympic athletes are known for making their home countries proud. Usually, they do this with impressive feats of strength, agility, or speed. But in 2021, Polish javelin thrower Maria Andrejczyk made headlines for the most unexpected reason: She sold her Olympic medal. Out of context, that sounds like a bizarre choice. But making that choice, Maria said, could not have been easier.

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During the Tokyo games, Maria took home the silver medal. Best of all, this was her very first Olympic medal. And yet, when she heard about an 8-month-old baby’s health struggles, Maria simply had to help. Miłoszek Małysa, (who sadly passed away in 2022), was in desperate need of heart surgery. Her last hope was an operation in California. She was in Poland.

It would cost Miłoszek’s family around $383,000 to make this journey and surgery possible. With half of the money raised by the time Maria became aware of this baby’s story, she stepped up to help them get the other half. How? By auctioning off her silver Olympic medal.

A Polish supermarket chain, Żabka, won the auction for $125,000. In the end, however, they insisted that Marie keep her medal. The fact that she would even offer to give that away, they said, was incredible enough.

“It’s with the greatest pleasure that I give to you, Żabka, my medal which for me is a symbol of struggle, faith and the pursuit of dreams despite the many challenges,” Maria wrote. “I hope for you it will be a symbol of the life of which we fought for together.”

Although 8-month-old Miłoszek still passed away the very next year, there’s no doubt that Maria’s selfless act of love still made a lasting impact on this family’s lives. Plus, it serves as a reminder that caring for others is far more valuable than caring for prized possessions.

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