Such a tragedy.
The tallest man in the USA has passed away at the age of 38 after suffering from a heart problem.
Breaking the news on Facebook, his mother said that he passed away on Friday at the Mayo Clinic, where she works as an ICU nurse.
Igor Vovkovinskiy had a condition called pituitary gigantism that caused growth hormone to increase at a more rapid rate, reaching 7ft8 in height.
His mother Svetlana said her son had died in Rochester, Minnesota, after moving there from the Ukraine in 1989 to seek medical treatment for Igor’s condition.
After two different surgeries were successful in saving his life, they couldn’t stop him from growing and by age 27, the Guinness World Records declared Igor as the tallest person in the US.
His mother wrote on Facebook: “Igor died on August 20 at 22:17 pm in hospital from heart disease. He and his older brother Oleh were with him until the end. His last dinner was: a piece of Kyiv cake and Fanta.
“A few hours before his death, he was accompanied by Oleh’s wife Alla and children. Igor was glad to see them, and although it was difficult for him to speak, he tried to joke about his nephew Andriy, whether he had learned the Ukrainian language in a month in Ukraine.”
While once the tallest person on earth, Igor’s title has since been taken over in 2016 by Turkish man Sultan Kösen who stands at a whopping 8ft2.
You also may remember Igor from the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest when he carried the Ukraine’s singer Zlata Ogvevich out on stage to make her seem smaller.
He was notified again by media in 2009 when he was spotted at an Obama rally wearing a “World’s biggest Obama supporter” t-shirt, which the former president thought was amazing.
