Sultan Kosen is the world’s tallest man at a staggering 8 feet 3 inches, but he has long refused to let his extraordinary height get in his way.
The globe-trotting giant has visited more than 120 countries and counting, enjoys celebrity status and has worked as a farmer, circus performer and honorary ambassador to his native Turkey.
The 41-year-old owes his astonishing height to a rare disease called pituitary gigantism, which causes his body to continually produce growth hormones.
He is one of ten people to have ever exceeded 8 feet and was awarded the Guinness World Record for tallest living man in 2009.
Kosen has since appeared alongside the world’s smallest woman, Jyoti Amge, who is just 2 feet tall, and first met at the pyramids in Egypt six years ago before meeting in California earlier this week .
While Kosen’s height, equivalent to that of a small giraffe, has given him fame and a jetset lifestyle, he has also had to deal with his disadvantages throughout his life.
Sadly, true love has eluded Kosen, whose marriage to a Syrian woman 2ft 7ins shorter than him ended in divorce due to the language barrier. His anguish prompted him to embark on a world tour in search of Mr. Right.
Kosen and Amge smiled happily as they posed for photos together yesterday.
Kosen, 41, and Amge, 30, previously reunited for a photo shoot in Cairo, Egypt, in 2018, where they posed in front of the Giza pyramids as part of a campaign to revive the country’s tourism industry.
According to Guinness World Records, Kosen is the first person in more than a decade to be taller than 8 feet and is one of 10 confirmed cases in history. He took the record-breaking title in 2009 (pictured above)
Kosen’s marriage to a Syrian woman 2 feet 7 inches shorter than him ended in divorce because of the language barrier.
Kosen started injecting at age ten, became the world’s tallest man in 2009, and finally stopped growing in 2011.
He is one of five siblings, and the rest of his family is “normal” size.
As a teenager, Kosen signed up for his local basketball team, but was told he was too tall to play. Since then, he has cheered on his favorite sport from the sidelines.
His height also forced him to leave school and work part-time as a farmer.
While his height held him back when he was young, the recognition of his uniqueness helped change his life.
On his first visit to the UK in September 2009, he said he hoped his newfound fame would change his life and help him find a wife.
‘It’s really hard to find a girlfriend. They’re usually afraid of me. I hope that now that I’m famous I can meet a lot of girls. My dream is to get married.’
He managed to fulfill this wish when he married the Syrian woman Merve Dibo in 2013.
He gushed at the time: “When I looked into her eyes, I knew it was love.”
His girlfriend, who was 20 when they married, said: “At first everyone around me told me not to marry him because of his height, but I fell in love with his heart, not his height. His height doesn’t bother me at all. absolute.
The couple subsequently divorced in 2021, citing the language barrier (he only spoke Turkish and his wife only Arabic) as the biggest problem in their relationship.
Kosen’s search for love continued as he traveled around the world, his first stop being Moscow, where he hoped to find a new wife with whom to have a son and daughter.
He then moved his search to the United States and has been to 127 of the world’s 195 countries, with no sign that his world tour will end anytime soon.
The tallest man in the world poses with the shortest man in the world in 2010
Chandra Bahadur Dangi of Nepal, left, the shortest adult ever verified by Guinness World Records, is pictured with the world’s tallest man, Sultan Kosen of Turkey, in 2014.
The world’s tallest man, Sultan Kosen (right), poses with his fiancée Merve Dibo during the henna night ceremony held one day before the wedding, on October 26, 2013.
In addition to traveling in search of love, Kosen toured the Indian Ocean as part of a circus troupe, charging customers $10 to take a photo with him.
“There must be thousands of acrobats and jugglers in the world, but when you start talking about Sultan Kosen, you are talking about only one in 7 billion people on this planet,” Bruno Loyale, CEO and teacher of circus ceremonies. .
He also hosted a cooking show in Romania, in which he is said to have participated.
Always one to look on the bright side, Kosen has said that his height offers a number of advantages.
He said that when he was young he could help his mother with jobs such as changing a broken light bulb and hanging curtains.
The disadvantages that come with his height include not being able to find clothes or shoes that fit him.
He has a custom-made 3-meter bed and shoes that fit his feet: the second largest in the world.
He previously held the world record for having the largest feet of a living person, with his left foot measuring 36.5 cm (1 ft 2 in) and his right foot measuring 35.5 cm (1 ft 1.98 in).
But this Guinness World Record was taken by the big-legged Jeison Orlando Rodríguez Hernández, whose feet measure 1.33 feet (40.55 cm) and 1.32 feet (40.47 cm).
Kosen also holds the record for largest hands by a living person, each measuring 28.5 cm (11.22 in) from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger.
A shocking image shows Amge standing on Kosen’s lap while he sat in a chair, but despite stretching very high, the world’s smallest woman only reached her collarbone.
Last year, a tallest man contender attempted to claim the title for himself, but the man and Kosen’s official measurements quickly showed who the winner was.
Beanpole Sulemana, 29, drew worldwide attention last year after doctors estimated his height at 9ft 6in at a rural Ghana clinic, where staff lacked the correct equipment to measure him.
The 29-year-old man was later measured and found to be just 7ft 4in tall.
A triumphant Kosen flaunted his tallest man certificate in response to his failed attempt to obtain his title, which he has held for 15 years.
“I won’t lose my record to anyone,” he proudly told reporters. “I’m determined to do it.”