Olympian's stunning act to raise $450,000 for life-saving surgery

Olympic silver medalist Maria Andrejczyk has made the beautiful move to auction off her first medal to help raise money for a child in need of life-saving surgery.

Polish star Andrejczyk won silver medal at the Tokyo Olympic Games in javelin, but had already announced her goal was to use it to raise money for a better cause having defeated bone cancer herself.

WOW: Motorsport world in shock over horrific death of F1 figure

'LIVES FOR TENNIS': Telling truth behind fresh Federer heartache

And Andrejczyk decided to auction off the illustrious award for $190,000 for Polish eight-month-old Miloszek Małysa to go to the US for life-saving surgery.

"Miloszek has a serious heart defect, he needs an operation," she wrote on social media.

"He already has a head start from Kubus — a boy who didn't make it in time but whose amazing parents decided to pass on the funds they collected."

"And in this way, I also want to help. It's for him that I am auctioning my Olympic silver medal," she added.

She wanted to raise $390,000 after contributing $180,000 herself.

Maria Andrejczyk auction exceeds expectations

On Monday, Andrejczyk announced Polish convenience store Zabka had purchased the medal for $265,00 surpassing her original goal.

"We have the winner of the auction!" the Olympian shared.

"On Friday I received this wonderful information, and due to the fact that you dears have already done wonders and joint forces have paid more than the equivalent of the initial medal to the Mi łooszka account - I decided to end the auction so that our Mi łoosz will receive the whole amount as soon as possible and can fly to the USA."

Following the good news, Zabka tweeted that Andrejczyk could keep her medal due to her beautiful gesture.

"We were moved by the beautiful and extremely noble gesture of our Olympian, so we decided to support the fundraiser for Miłoszek," Zabka tweeted.

"We decided that from Tokyo will stay with Maria! We admire [Andrejczyk] and we are glad that we were able to contribute," they added.

Watch 'Mind Games', the new series from Yahoo Sport Australia exploring the often brutal mental toil elite athletes go through in pursuit of greatness:

Click here to sign up to our newsletter for all the latest and breaking stories from Australia and around the world.