Polish discus thrower Piotr Malachowski found something more important than the silver medal he won in Rio.
Malachowski returned to his home country and immediately put his medal up for auction in an effort to raise money for Olek Szymanski, a 3-year-old boy suffering from a rare form of eye cancer called retinoblastoma.
Through the online auction, Malachowski attempted to raise roughly $84,000 to go towards the $126,000 cost of a surgery that could possibly save the boy’s life. A third of the money had already been raised by the Polish foundation Siepomaga.
According to ESPN, the price for the medal had reached $19,000 on Tuesday when Malachowski prematurely pulled it down. He took to Facebook and announced that Polish billionaires Dominika and Sebastian Kulczyk had agreed to purchase the medal for the remaining cost of the surgery.
Malachoswksi has another silver medal from the 2008 Beijing Games, and his Rio medal has already done much more good than it would have done sitting in his trophy case.