Tallest man in US, Igor Vovkovinskiy has died at 38

The tallest man in the United States, 2.35 meters tall, died Friday of heart disease at the age of 38 in the state of Minnesota, her mother announced on Facebook.

His family reported that Vovkovinskiy, born in Ukraine, died Friday of heart disease at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. It was her mother, Svetlana Vovkovinska, an intensive care unit nurse in May, who reported her death on Facebook.

Vovkovinskiy entered the Mayo Clinic in 1989 as a child in need of treatment. A tumor pressing against her pituitary gland caused her to secrete abnormal levels of growth hormone.. He grew up to be the tallest man in America with a height of 234.5 centimeters (7ft 8.33in) and ended up staying in Rochester.

His older brother Oleh Ladan told the newspaper Star Tribune from Minneapolis which Vovkovinskiy was a celebrity when he arrived from Ukraine due to his size and the Cold War of the late 1980s.. But Ladan from Brooklyn Park added that Vovkovinskiy “would have preferred to have a normal life than to be known”.

Vovkovinskiy was featured in the TV show The Dr Oz Show and was mentioned by President Barack Obama during a political event in 2009, when the president detected him near the stage wearing a T-shirt with the phrase “the biggest Obama supporter in the world”. The young man, who towered over the gathered crowd of supporters, he exchanged a handshake with the then Democratic president.

In 2013, Vovkovinskiy brought the Ukrainian candidate to the stage for her performance at the Eurovision Song Contest.

At the age of 27, Vovkovinskiy traveled to New York City and was declared the tallest person in America by a Guinness Book of Records judge on the Oz show. He was 0.84 centimeter (one-third of an inch) ahead of a Virginia police officer.

In 2012, he asked to cover the sum of $ 16,000 to buy shoes specially designed for him that would not hurt him.. At that time he declared that For years, she hadn’t had a pair of shoes that would fit her, as her proper height was E26.10. Thousands of people gave more than double the amount he needed. Reebok provided him with free sports shoes.

Vovkovinskiy was born on September 8, 1982 in Bar, Ukraine, son of Vovkovinska and Oleksandr Ladan, according to Ranfranz and Vine Funeral Home, which is holding his funeral on Saturday. Her father has already passed away.

According to the Guinness Book, the tallest man in the world is currently the Turkish Sultan Kösen (2.51 meters).

Corn the tallest man in modern history was an American, Robert Wadlow, who reached the height of 2.72 m. He also suffered from abnormally high production of growth hormones and died in 1940 at just 22 years old.

With information from the AP and AFP

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