A Polish discus thrower who put the silver medal he recently won at the Rio Games on auction to pay for the treatment of a 3-year-old boy with eye cancer ended the bidding three days early after the richest people in Poland bought it.
Piotr Malachowski wrote on his Facebook page Tuesday that he prematurely closed the auction because Dominika and Sebastian Kulczyk "declared their willingness to buy my silver medal for an amount which enables us to meet the goal set."
Malachowski was looking for about $84,000 so that a boy, Olek Szymanski, could get surgery for hisretinoblastoma in New York to try to save the child's eyesight. The cost of the surgery is $126,000, but one-third of it already was raised by the Polish foundation Siepomaga.
"My silver medal today is worth a lot more than a week ago," Malachowski wrote. "It is worth the life and health of a small Olek. It is our great shared success."
The Kulczyks are brother and sister and are worth $3.4 billion combined, according to Forbes magazine.
Race pals reunited
An ultra-marathon runner has been reunited with the stray dog that accompanied him through part of a grueling desert race in China and then disappeared.
Dion Leonard said the stray befriended him as he took part in the 155-mile Gobi March race, part of the 4 Deserts race series. He vowed to take the dog, named Gobi, home to Scotland.
Leonard said the dog disappeared from a house in the Chinese town of Urumqi while he flew to Beijing to arrange getting her home. Leonard returned to Urumqi to search for Gobi, using posters and social media to track her down.
"On Tuesday night, I received a phone call ... saying, 'We've got Gobi. We think it is her. It looks like her in the posters, come round and have a look,' " he told the BBC. "Thankfully we went over and as soon as I walked into the lounge, she came running across the room and into my arms."
Gobi joined Leonard on the second day of the six-stage, seven-day race, and ran alongside two other days.
"She ran 77 miles during those three stages, she slept with me during the evenings. And we just formed this bond that couldn't be broken during the race," he said. "I knew as soon as the race had finished -- and even during it -- that I had to make an effort to try and get her back to the U.K. somehow."
He now hopes the dog will join him in Scotland before Christmas.
Generous Parker
Brazil's O Globo newspaper recently published a story about San Antonio guard Tony Parker's response to Olympic basketball volunteer Vitor Galvani's tale of being robbed at knifepoint on his way home from a Team France game in Rio de Janeiro.
While Galvani waited at a bus station outside Rio's Olympic Park after France's victory against Venezuela, a group of teens grabbed his cellphone, and when Galvani gave chase, one of the robbers revealed a knife.
Parker replaced Galvani's cellphone, then presented him Beats By Dre headphones and Lacoste sunglasses. When Galvani joked that he'd be robbed again, Parker arranged for a car and security to ensure he made it home safely.
QUIZ
How many medals did Poland win at the 2016 Rio Games?
ANSWER
- (Two golds, three silvers and six bronzes)
Sports on 08/27/2016