Igor Vovkovinskiy, the tallest man in the US, dies at age 38 in Minnesota.
His family disclosed that the Ukrainian-born Vovkovinskiy died of heart disease on Friday at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
His mother, Svetlana Vovkovinska, an ICU nurse at Mayo, posted about his death on Facebook.
Vovkovinskiy came to the Mayo Clinic in 1989 as a child seeking treatment. A tumor pressing against his pituitary gland caused it to secrete abnormal levels of growth hormone.
He grew to become the tallest man in the US at 7ft 8.33in (2.35m) and ended up staying in Rochester.
His older brother, Oleh Ladan of Brooklyn Park, told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that Vovkovinskiy was a celebrity when he arrived from Ukraine because of his size and the flickering cold war of the late 1980s. But Ladan said Vovkovinskiy “would have rather lived a normal life than be known”.
Vovkovinskiy appeared on the Dr Oz Show and was called out by Barack Obama during a campaign rally in 2009, when the president noticed him near the stage wearing a T-shirt that read “World’s Biggest Obama Supporter”.
In 2013, Obama carried the Ukrainian contestant onto the stage to perform in the Eurovision Song Contest.
When he was 27, Vovkovinskiy traveled to New York and was declared America’s tallest living person by a Guinness World Records adjudicator on Oz’s show. He edged out a sheriff’s deputy in Virginia by one-third of an inch.
According to Guinness World Records, the tallest man in the world is Sultan Kösen, from Turkey. In 2016, he was measured at more than 8ft 2inches.
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According to the same source, the tallest person ever recorded was Robert Pershing Wadlow, from Illinois, who was measured at 8ft 11inches. He died in 1940 aged just 22, from a septic blister on his right ankle caused by a poorly fitted brace.
In 2012, Vovkovinskiy issued a plea for help to cover the estimated 16,000 dollars cost for specially made shoes that wouldn’t cause him crippling pain.
At the time, he said he hadn’t owned a pair for years that fit his feet.
Thousands donated more than double what he needed and Reebok even provided the custom shoes for free.
Vovkovinskiy was born on 8 September 1982 in Bar, Ukraine, to Vovkovinska and Oleksandr Ladan, according to Ranfranz and Vine Funeral Home, which will hold a memorial service on Saturday.
The story of Vovkovinskiy is quite similar to Charles Sogli, the supposed tallest man in Ghana.
It can be recalled that the 22-year-old man, who is nearly 8ft tall, appealed for some customized footwear and working gear to keep him in his welding and metal fabrication job.
More so, Charles Sogli appealed for a special vehicle to aid his mobility.
The young man, believed to be the tallest man in the Volta Region, said he dropped out of school because he could not get footwear for the size of his feet and feared the same fate could truncate his apprenticeship as a welder.
Sogli, comes from Ziope in the Agotime-Ziope District of the Volta Region. He is the third of five siblings and the only one with the unique feature.
The young man whose foot measures at 16 inches disclosed that he enrolled as a welder and metal fabricator apprentice in Ho about a year ago.
He mentioned that a shoemaker got him a footwear for work however, “It is not protective”.
Sogli also said it was difficult for him to use commercial vehicles due to his height, with many commercial drivers denying him their services.
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