The tallest man in the United States has died in Rochester, Minnesota aged thirty-eight.
Igor Vovkovinskiy’s family said he died of heart disease on Friday.
His mother, Svetlana Vovkovinska, posted about his death on Facebook.
Ukrainian-born Mr. Vovkovinskiy travelled to the US in 1989 as a child seeking treatment.
A tumour 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 2.34 metres, and ended up staying in Rochester, Minnesota.
His older brother, Oleh Ladan, said Mr Vovkovinskiy was a celebrity when he arrived from Ukraine because of his size.
But Mr. Ladan said his brother “would have rather lived a normal life than be known.”
Mr. Vovkovinskiy appeared on The Dr Oz Show and was called out by former president 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 2012, he issued a plea to cover the estimated 16,000 Dollars cost for specially made shoes for his size 26 feet that would not cause him crippling pain.
In 2013, he carried the Ukrainian contestant onto the stage to perform in the Eurovision Song Contest.
When he was twenty-seven, Mr. Vovkovinskiy travelled to New York City and was declared America’s tallest living person by a Guinness World Records adjudicator on Oz’s show.
