May 12, 2004: Ukrainian Giant Livin' Large
PODOLYANTSI,
Ukraine (Reuters) -- All Leonid Stadnyk wants is a simple, quiet and inconspicuous
life. But the 33-year old Ukrainian is just too tall for that.
At a height of eight feet four inches, Stadnyk may be the world's tallest man and he keeps on growing.
Measurements by the Ukrainian branch of the Guinness Book of World Records show he is already taller than Tunisia's Radhouane Charbib, who is listed by the book as the tallest living man.
The local and foreign press have descended on his village, making him a minor celebrity. He gets paid for some of the interviews and has been offered help in getting shoes and clothes that might fit him.
But Stadnyk says his height has brought him little joy.
"For my entire life I wanted to be shorter. I was bowing down, stooping," Stadnyk said, sitting in his house in the tiny village of Podolyantsi in central Ukraine. "I have always wanted to be in the shadows. I tried not to stand out, but now..."
Stadnyk remembered happier times when he was about the same size as his classmates in the village school, even a bit shorter. But then at the age of 14 he started growing rapidly.
At first nobody seemed to take much notice of the tall, awkward boy with a shy smile. But then his first problems began.
"There were no shoes, no clothes for me in the shops. When I was undergoing medical checks, they could not measure my height, the scale ran out. Then I became self-conscious," he said, blaming a hormonal imbalance for his growth despite never having proper medical tests to diagnose his condition.
Ordering made-to-measure clothes is not easy in former Soviet Ukraine, where often a simple transaction can require dozens of documents. Money is scarce after he had to quit his job as a veterinarian due to poor health.
He said his arms are very strong but complains his legs are getting weaker under his weight of about 440 lbs.
"For my job, I had to travel seven kilometers [4 miles] every day. With my height I could move only by horse, on a cart."
"It did not matter whether it was winter frost or summer heat, animals fell ill and I had to go. I did not have proper shoes and my feet froze. I had to stop working."
Now his mother is the breadwinner in the family, while Stadnyk stays at home and takes care of the house, land and cattle.
The family house is crumbling. He walks cautiously with a bowed head to avoid the ceiling. He curls in a small armchair with his knees nearly reaching his chin. He sleeps on two beds.
Stadnyk gets a pension worth about $28 a month while needing at least $200 just to order a pair of shoes. They last about four months, he said.
Mother and son rely mostly on home-grown fruit and vegetables.
"Life is difficult. We are working, working very hard to earn our bread," he says. "With every year it is getting more difficult. Years pass by, my health gets weaker."
And he says he is lonely.
Stadnyk's village is isolated. Most youngsters have left to find work in bigger cities. Houses cry out for a coat of paint and are circled by half-broken fences.
He dismisses local media frenzy around him, saying he has no plans to capitalize on his extreme size and move into show business. He wants to stay near his mother, his best and only friend at the moment, and work in the garden.
"I do not smoke, do not drink. Every penny I can save I spend on buying
seeds and seedlings. The garden is a place for me. Height doesn't matter there."
More Coverage from Around the Globe
Associated Press, April 19, 2004:
At
age 33, Leonid Stadnik wishes he would stop growing. He's already 8 feet,
4 inches. Recent measurements show that Stadnik is already 7 inches taller
than Radhouane Charbib of Tunisia, listed by the Guinness Book of World Records
as the tallest living man.
He's also gaining on the 8-11 Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in history. Yet for Stadnik, the prospect of becoming a record-holder would be little comfort.
"My two-year-old suit's sleeves and pants are now 30 centimeters (12 inches) shorter than I need,'' said Stadnik. "My height is God's punishment. My life has no sense.''
Stadnik's height keeps him confined to this tiny village 130 miles west of the capital, Kiev.
"Taking a public bus for me is the same as getting into a car's trunk for a normal person,'' he said.
Stadnik's unusual growth began after a brain operation at age 14, which is believed to have stimulated his pituitary gland. Since then, life just keeps getting harder.
Although he once was able to work as a veterinarian at a cattle farm, he had to quit three years ago after his feet were frostbitten because he wasn't able to afford proper shoes for his 17-inch feet.
This month, he finally got a good pair, paid for by some local businessmen.
Their $200 cost was the equivalent of about seven months' worth of the tiny pension that Stadnik receives in the economically struggling country.
Stadnik sleeps on two beds joined lengthwise and moves in a crouch through the small one-story house that he shares with his mother Halyna.
His weight of about 440 pounds aggravates a recently broken leg, and he suffers from constant knee pain.
Despite his aches, he tries to keep himself busy with the usual routine of country life. He works in the garden, tends the family's cows and pigs, and helps neighbors with their animals.
To relax, he cultivates exotic plants and pampers his tiny, blue and yellow pet parakeet with his huge hands.
Bronyslav, a neighbor who refused to give his last name, described Stadnik as the "most unselfish, diligent man of a pure soul.''
His friends, in turn, treat him with the same sort of soft good humor. They're trying to organize a trip for him to the Carpathian Mountains to show him that ``there's something in the world taller than you,'' Bronyslav said.
Pravda, April 29, 2004:
33-year old Leonid Stadnik is 2 meters 55 centimeters tall, and he continues
growing.
Mr. Stadnik surpassed the result registered in Guinness World Records (2 meters
44 centimeters) 3 years ago, and he continues to grow. He is going to be awarded
the title "Pride of Ukraine" soon. However, his extraordinary height
gives the man more problems than fame. Leonid Stadnik is concerned that if
he continues growing, he will have to enter his house on all his fours soon.
The tallest man in the world has to squat and bend while walking not to hit the ceiling with his head. He just hates his height as his cottage rooms were constructed under Soviet standards: in the older part of the cottage the rooms are 2 meter 20 centimeters high, in another part they are 2 meters 60 centimeters high.
Leonid
has the biggest palm in the world as well - his palm is 31 centimeters long.
Probably for this reason he does not drink alcohol: any glass looks tiny to
him.
Unlike other tallest men, he is not well-known because he was born in small village Podolyantsy in Ukraine, near Chernobyl. Because of lack of roads, no vehicle can reach his village, and local residents use horse carts for trips. Radiation might cause wonders in the area: the fattest man in the world (Vasily Yanov, 450 kilograms) lived there as well.
Leonid Stadnik does not consider himself successful. He graduated both from high school and from university with distinction, but cannot work as a vet: cows get scared of the giant man.
Mr. Stadnik blames doctors of his trouble: they removed some tumor from his brain when he was 13, but this affected his hypophysis and he started growing fast. When Leonid was in 9th grade, he became the biggest man among the villagers.
Doctors did not allow Leonid to join the Army because he had flat feet. The man took offence of the doctors, "I don"t go to doctors anymore. They even did not look at me at the military registration and enlistment office. They were only reading their papers. People should not be treated this way".
Leonid tries to avoid seeing himself, he has no mirror in his house. He reconciled with adverse circumstances and enjoys with the little things he has, like a genuine Christian. "I don"t drink spirits and don"t smoke, I haven"t tried beer in my life", says Leonid. "I am OK without over-indulgence".
He has dreamed of seeing the world, but was only in Ukrainian capital Kiev ("they brought me to the Zoo, and I felt myself an exhibit"), and in regional center Zhitomir. The man has big trouble while traveling: no transport fits him. "I can"t enter the motor vehicle. In a bus I have to squat, this embarrasses people. I can"t even enter the tractor, although I know studied tractor-driving before. I can move around only in a horse cart".
However, this 200-kilogram man is too heavy for a horse.
Another problem of the giant man is finding clothes and footwear.
"For 10 years I was chief vet at the farm 7 kilometers away from my village. I went there by horse cart, in winter I got frozen". Leonid says that the farm has "an aggressive environment": the mud ate away his only boots. He received new boots only in 1.5 years - a footwear factory in Zhitomir produced a pair of boots of size 60 for him.
To find socks which could be big enough is another critical problem for Leonid.
The
man has no TV set ("I don"t need it, I am too busy working on my
farm") and telephone ("I was given a mobile, but it was hard to
press its buttons with my fingers").
One day he was lucky to find a big sweater, "I bought the sweater at the second-hand shop, it fits me all right. There are big people somewhere if one can see clothes for them".
Leonid usually wears quilted jacket, clothes for work on a farm and a cap. He has a business suit, but the suit is too small for him now: trousers are 30 centimeters shorter than his leg length. Leonid is not embarrassed that his clothing is not new: he wants to look just like any villager. Recently he was offered to put on white clothes and campaign for some candidate for Ukrainian presidency.
"There are three ways to use my height: repairing roofs (Leonid is able to repair the cottage roofs while standing on the ground), put electric bulbs on the posts and promote some candidates. Nothing of this satisfies me. I"d better earn my living on a farm. Politics is not my area", Leonid says proudly.
Leonid seems to be disappointed about women. He says he "met different ones" at school and university, but "did not find a good one."
Nobody laughs at Leonid at his village. The village is small, there are no children there. No mayor, no church.
Leonid eats mainly potatoes and suet. He has no money to buy delicatessen, and also he is afraid to get fat, "My joints don"t keep up with my height, I will have to stay in bed if I get fat".
The giant man refuses to go to the doctor. Ukraine pays him an allowance - $30 per month. Recently the allowance was increased by $1.
Yanina Sokolovskaya
The Telegraph, London, May 3, 2004:
Relatives remember Leonid Stadnyk as the smallest boy in his class at school. Then he began to shoot up, and 20 years later he has not stopped growing.
Standing 2.54 metres tall in his bare feet, Mr Stadnyk, 33, is believed to be, by a considerable distance, the world's tallest living man. The softly spoken giant, who lives in a remote village in Ukraine, is a clear 17.8 centimetres taller than the man now recognised as the Guinness world record holder. But while the 2.36-metre Radhouane Charbib, from Tunisia, revels in his international celebrity, Mr Stadnyk makes a reluctant record-holder.
"This is my punishment from God," he lamented last week. "What sin I have committed, I do not know. All my life I have dreamed of being just like everyone else. My height is my curse."
He lives in abject poverty with his mother and sister in the village of Podoliantsi, 182 kilometres west of Kiev. He is, quite simply, a staggering sight. His head grazes the branches of tall trees; his mother barely comes up to his waist.
Mr Stadnyk suffers from acromegalic gigantism, a condition caused by a tumour on his pituitary gland that makes it produce too much growth hormone. In the past two years he has grown 30 centimetres,and a suit bought in 2002 is already far too small. If his condition is not treated he is likely to become the tallest man in recorded history, beating Robert Pershing Wadlow, from Illinois, who was 2.71 metres by the time he died in 1940 at the age of 22.
But it is not a milestone that Mr Stadnyk craves. Although his height has been verified by Ukrainian officials, and the Guinness Book of Records is seeking independent confirmation, he would rather be left alone. Already self-conscious about his appearance, he rarely leaves his home village for fear of being ridiculed.
He has never had a girlfriend and will not get married because of his illness.
"I don't really have any friends," he says with a sigh. He relies on his mother Galina, 62.
"If anything happens to my mother, I don't even know how to buy food. I haven't been to the market for five years."
When he was 12 doctors removed part of the tumour, but a piece remained lodged in his brain.
Doctors in Britain say that his condition will deteriorate rapidly unless he has urgent surgery, but he cannot afford the cost of transport and medical care.
"I haven't been for a medical check-up since I was a child," he said.
Even so, he has to labour in the fields on his family's scrap of land because he cannot survive on his monthly disability allowance of 165 hryvnia ($43).
"I fall down, I swear, I get up again," he said. "It's very hard for me, but I have no choice."