- World’s second tallest man competes at Paris Paralympics
- He has not been given a special bed, so he has to sleep on the floor.
The world’s second tallest man is sleeping on the floor in the athletes’ village at the Paris Paralympics, it has emerged.
Morteza Mehrzad, 36, from Iran, was born with a rare medical condition called acromegaly, which causes excessive growth, and is 2.55 metres tall, just below Turkey’s Sultan Kosen, who is 2.60 metres tall.
Mehrzad is a two-time Paralympic champion in sitting volleyball and is aiming to win three gold medals in the French capital.
But his task has not been helped by the fact that he sleeps in the athletes’ village.
Iran head coach Hadi Rezaei said Olympic Games.comIn Tokyo they have made a special bed, but unfortunately not here.
The world’s second tallest man, Morteza Merhzad (centre), is forced to sleep on the floor in the athletes’ village during the Paralympic Games.
Merhzad is a two-time Paralympic sitting volleyball champion and is going for gold again.
Sultan Kosen (right) is the only man in the world taller than Merhzad, and posed for a photo with the world’s shortest man, Chandra Bahadur Dangi of Nepal (left) in 2014.
‘He will remain lying on the ground.’
Despite Merhzad’s preparations being far from ideal, Rezaei insists his fellow Iranian remains focused on emerging victorious from the Games.
“He has the most important goal in mind,” Rezaei continued.
‘He doesn’t care if he lies on the ground or has nothing to eat.
‘In any case, he has the mind to be a champion. Morteza can be considered the best player in our team.
‘In fact, if we go back to Morteza when he was 12 years old, nobody had any consideration for him, but when he became a sitting volleyball player, everyone, all over the world, knows him and respects him.
‘I would like to tell you one thing: I believe that every person has potential in the world and we have to discover it.’
Olympic athletes received cardboard beds (pictured) for the Paris Games
Australian swimming champion Ariarne Titmus (pictured) was unhappy with conditions in the athletes’ village, claiming “we were living in filth”.
Athletes at last month’s Olympics also complained about the bedding situation in Paris after being forced to sleep on single beds made of cardboard.
Australian swimming champion Ariarne Titmus was also far from impressed with the conditions in the village, saying “we were living in filth”.
During a guest appearance on Australian TV show The Project, Titmus explained: “The village is not as glamorous as people think. The bathroom in my apartment was bigger than the living room for the four of us.
‘They changed our sheets after the first night we were there and then they didn’t change them for the rest of the time we were there, so we were living in filth.
“We had to lie about being roommates in order to get toilet paper rolls. If you ran out of toilet paper, you were given one (roll) for four days for the whole apartment.”
