Enough About Ryan Lochte . . . Meet Piotr Malachowski

We continue to be served a steady diet of Ryan Lochte stories from his being dropped by sponsors to continued investigations. Given his long history of immature conduct and comments, the exhaustive media attention for Lochte may be much to do about nothing. A far more worthy subject is Polish Olympian Piotr Malachowski who is auctioning silver medal for boy with rare cancer. Malachowski has shown the true character of a Olympian.

A Polish discus thrower, Malachowski is seeking to raise money to help 3-year-old Olek Szymanski, who has retinoblastoma, an eye cancer affecting young children. Olek must go to New York. He is quoted as saying “Winning an Olympic medal is one of an athlete’s life dreams. Of course, the most precious is gold. I did everything in my power to get it. Unfortunately this time I did not succeed. However, fate gave me a chance to increase the value of my ‘silver.’”

The Polish foundation called Siepomaga has already gathered about a third of the roughly 480,000 zlotys ($126,000). The highest bid in the auction for Malachowski’s silvermedal on Poland’s Allegro website is about $20,000.

Why talk about some spoiled brat like Lochte when there is a man of the quality of Malachowski to discuss.