Pawel Fajdek has denied he attempted to pay for a taxi home from a night out with his World Championship gold medal.
The Polish hammer thrower won gold in Beijing on Sunday and celebrated his achievement with a well deserved night of carousing. So thorough was this carousing session that Fajdek was unable to locate his precious medal on awaking yesterday morning.
The police traced the medal to the taxi driver who drove Fadjek home the previous evening. Possibly short of the fare, Fadjek offered the driver his World championship gold medal instead.
The driver decided he would accept this as a taxi fare.
When pressed by the police, he agreed to surrender the medal. It is not known whether he was recompensed for the lost taxi fare.
Fadjek has vigorously protested the Chinese reportage of events (via the newspaper Tencent), though he would be appear to be disadvantaged in this endeavour by the fact of his condition on the night in question. The broad consensus is that he was drinking a hell of a lot.
In his version, the taxi driver is a more nefarious figure, although he did allow that he may have driven off with the medal 'unknowingly'.
They wouldn't describe their own citizen as guilty because it's easier to blame it on the other side.
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