Olympian Sells Medal to Pay for Child's Cancer Care

Winning your event in the Olympics is the product of a minimum of four years of training, hard work, and dedication to your sport. An Olympic medal represents those three things, and it proves that you are one of the greatest athletes in your sport worldwide.

Polish discus thrower Piotr Malachowski found something much more important and valuable than the Olympic medal. As soon as returned to Poland, he put up his medal that he had worked so hard to get up for auction in an effort to raise funds for Olek Szymanski. Olek Szymanski, at the time, was a 3-year-old boy, who was sick with a rare form of eye cancer called retinoblastoma at the time. If this cancer was not handled within the next few months Olek would sadly pass, so Piotr made it his goal to make sure Olek would live.

People from the media were supportive but were heavily questioning his decision to sell his hard-earned medal. Olek responded to the media, “For an athlete to win an Olympic medal is a dream come true, however, fate has given me the chance to increase the value of my silver.” Piotr reached out to his large following on social media and everyone fell in love with the athlete's efforts to help Olek who was a complete stranger. His post started to trend, and was sent to thousands of people. As a result, the Szymanski family began to receive large donations to help their son. On top of his social media post, he revealed that shortly after all his fans helped him raise nearly $65,000, he finally sold his Olympic medal for an additional $19,000. Piotr's reaction to this type of support from all of his fans was, “We were able to show that together we can do wonders.”

Malachowski’s total reached an amount of a bit north of $84,000, which could cover roughly half of the treatment. The last part of the funds to treat Olek was raised by a Polish foundation of Siepomaga. Olek had to go to New York to get the proper treatment for his rare cancer.

Malachowski did say that the healthcare system in most countries including the US and in most parts of his home country is broken and can’t provide quality treatment for serious illnesses without paying a lot of money. Malachowski is correct: the US healthcare system is broken and affects primarily the people that have low incomes or people from other countries that seek expensive treatment like Olek. There need to be more people in this world like Malachowski who are willing to make every effort to help pay for and save the people who need it most. Malachowski sold the thing that he had been working for the past four-plus years and without thinking twice about it he sold it for the greater good. 

Another reason for our healthcare system being broken is there are too many people that are uninsured, and that drives up the cost of medication and treatments that are needed by these people to live. Insurance for people with low incomes is a financial burden that they sadly can’t afford. Access to top doctors is uneven, people like Olek wouldn’t have been able to afford this without the help of Malachowski, but our health care system shouldn’t be this way. As of now, people who are wealthy can only afford the treatment that Olek got, and there are thousands of cases just like Olek who can’t afford the help they need. We as a country need to change our healthcare system and help out those in need.

By Avner Belsky