Amid the continuous Summer Games, an eight-foot Paralympian has been forced to sleep on the ground at the athlete village in Paris.
Standing at an amazing 8 feet 0.85 inches tall, Morteza Mehrzad is on Iran’s sitting volleyball squad playing at the 2024 Paralympic Games but his ailment has caused him to sleep on the ground.
The 36-year-old was born with a rare hormonal ailment known as acromegaly, in which the body generates too much growth hormone, rapidly developing bodily tissues and bones.
Acromegaly is rare and the physical changes happen gradually over many years, so the ailment often takes a
long time to identify; for Mehrzad, he knew when he was a teenager, reaching 6 feet at just 16 years old.
When he was 15, he sadly had a major pelvic fracture, which stopped his right leg from developing and left it shorter than his left one.
