Life, Not Medals, Matters To Olympian Medal Will Be Auctioned To Help Sprinter’s Cancer Recovery

Former Olympic sprinter Raelene Boyle was dying from breast cancer a year ago and running out of money paying for the expensive treatment.

Yet she still had one of her most precious possessions, a silver medal she won in the 100 meters in the 1972 Olympics. The choice for Boyle was really no choice at all: She had to sell it.

Now, Boyle’s cancer is in remission and the money from the sale of the medal at a fund-raiser on Friday will help her put her life back together. And if the right person buys the medal, she might just get it back.

“Putting it up for sale wasn’t that hard a decision. I didn’t really think about it like that at the time,” the 46-year-old Australian said Tuesday. “I was thinking about doing everything I could. Everybody else thinks it’s harder than I do.”

With Boyle’s cancer in remission, she looks and feels healthier. She is still scared, though. Not so much of the cancer, but of being the center of attention at the fund-raiser.

“I was a very sick girl last year,” Boyle said. “I was in my sixth month of chemotherapy, I had very thin hair, I was very pale and very puffy from all the steroids they pumped into me. I wondered whether I’d even make it to this year.”

Now, her biggest concern is stage fright, she joked.

Organizers have sold 580 seats to the lunch at $150 apiece and, with the auctions, estimate raising $180,000 to be shared between Boyle and the Cancer Foundation.

The lunch is the fourth in a series honoring Australian sporting greats who are fighting illnesses. Rugby league player John Raper (cancer), three-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Dawn Fraser (heart trouble) and sprinter Betty Cuthbert (multiple sclerosis) have also received help from an organizing committee, which includes Australia’s richest man, media magnate Kerry Packer.

“It will be good to catch up with some old friends but it really is very daunting,” Boyle said. “I never feel comfortable being the center of attention.”

Boyle won a silver medal in the 200 meters at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and won two more silvers in Munich, in the 100 and 200. She has already given away two of her medals, one to a friend, the other to a nephew.

At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Boyle carried the Australian flag in the opening ceremony but was disqualified in the 200 meters for false starts.

She was named to her fourth team for the Moscow Olympics in 1980 but was the only Australian track athlete to boycott the games following the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

The flag from the 1976 ceremony will be among the auction items.