Warsaw: In a touching incident, Polish discus thrower Piotr Malachowski has sold his silver medal, which he won in the Rio Olympics, to raise funds for the treatment of a toddler suffering from eye-cancer.
Malachowski put his medal up for an online auction immediately after returning from Rio de-Janeiro in a bid to help three-year-old Olek Szymanski who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer (eye) called retinoblastoma.
The silver-medallist Olympian wanted to raise around $84,000 for Olek’s surgery costing $126,000. It may be mentioned that 1/3rd of the surgery’s cost was already raised by a charitable foundation of Poland called Siepomaga. Eventually, the medal was on Thursday purchased by two of the country’s magnates – Dominika and Sebastian Kulczyk – for the surgery’s remaining cost.