Olympian auctions medal to fund three-year-old’s cancer treatment

Piotr Malachowski, a Polish discus thrower, auctioned off the silver medal he won in Rio to pay for a child’s cancer treatment.

The Olympics continue to give us reason to smile, even now that they’re over.

The 33-year-old Polish discus thrower, Piotr Malachowski, took the silver medal after a throw of 67.55 meters, less than one meter behind the gold medal winner, Christoph Harting of Germany.

He didn’t hold onto that medal for long, however, when he decided to auction it off in hopes of raising enough money to pay for 3-year-old Olek Szymanski’s cancer treatment. Szymanski has retinoblastoma, an eye cancer that effects young children.

The medal was bought on Tuesday for $19,000 by a Polish couple named Dominika and Sebastian Kulczyk.

“We were able to show that together we can make miracles happen,” said Malachowski in Facebook post on Tuesday. “My silver medal is worth much more than a week ago.”

Luckily this isn’t the only Olympic medal Malachowski has won. He took home the silver in 2008 at the Beijing games. He was also crowned the world champion in 2015.

Malachowski competed in another event on Thursday in Laussane, Switzerland but did not fair quite as well as he did in Rio:

Regardless of his sixth place finish, it seems that the crowd at the event was very well aware of his kind gesture and celebrated him accordingly:

As most things go in the media, recent coverage has centered around the more negative stories following the Olympics. Ryan Lochte has received an immense amount of criticism after over-exaggerating a story about being robbed at gunpoint.

Stories have come from every news-outlet describing the events that have tarnished Lochte’s previously great reputation.

So thank you, Piotr Malachowski, for giving us something positive to focus our attention on.