Polish javelin thrower Maria Andrejczyk auctions off an Olympic medal for her son’s heart surgery

Her name is Maria Andrejczyk, who won a silver medal in the javelin throw at the Tokyo Olympics this year, despite suffering from bone cancer.

When she learned that her eight-month-old son had to go to the United States to have serious heart surgery, she decided to auction off the silver medal as a last resort. Therefore, the silver medal was handed over to a trade network called ‘Zabka‘ in Poland.

From the moment she found out about her son’s fate, her family tried to raise funds through various means, including Facebook. But heart surgery at Stanford Hospital in California, USA, is not a trivial matter. It costs close to pounds lakhs 300,000. They were only able to collect half of that amount.

Maria failed to win a medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics. In 2017, she lost all her matches due to a shoulder injury. In 2018, she was unable to even look at the playing field because she was diagnosed with bone cancer. This year she came to Tokyo, throwing the spear of self-confidence to the point of shattering all those wickets.

“It didn’t take me long to make up my mind to auction the silver medal,” says Maria.

She received pounds 125,000 from the auction. The full amount is now enough to save the son’s life.

Meanwhile, the Polish ‘Zabka’ supermarket chain, which won her medal at auction, behaved like a company with a heart. What they did was, after winning the auction, donate the money to Mary and her family.

Therefore, she has now inherited both her son and the silver medal.  This world needs companies with mothers and hearts like this.