The top 10: Sporting beanpoles
2 Maria Sharapova
Perhaps the scariest aspect of tennis pin-up (but only in bedrooms with high ceilings) and the Wicker Woman that is Maria Sharapova is less her admission that she is “not a social bunny, I’m a dorkâ€, more that she has reached a statuesque 6ft 2in and is still growing. The Russian should, perhaps, see a trained medical professional about this.
3 Kerri Walsh
If any sport offers an advantage to the taller person, it’s volleyball. Some jump, but others, such as the much- too-tall 6ft 3in American beach volleyball millionairess Kerri Walsh, can simply stand there at the net and swat anything that comes her way. And she does. Her mantra? “Play dirty and be ready for anything.†Somebody should tell her that we are talking about beach volleyball here.
4 Suleiman Ali Nashnush
The tallest basketball player of all time was a Libyan international. He just kept growing and growing, until in 1960 he reached the frankly freakish 8ft Åin mark before deciding it was time for an operation in Rome which — somehow — stopped him growing. When he died in 1991, he was the world’s tallest living person.
5 Ivo Karlovic
Swings and roundabouts for poor Ivo. At a skyscraper- esque 6ft 10in, the Croatian tennis player is one of the finest servers of his generation. Tragically for him, his opponents — even his British opponents — have discovered that his groundstrokes are less fearsome.
6 Michael Gross
At a traffic-light-length 6ft 7in, the so-called Albatross was the finest butterfly swimmer of the 1980s and has three Olympic golds on his mantelpiece in Germany to prove it. The really weird thing was the Albatross’s inhuman wingspan of 7ft 5in.
7 Nikolai Valuev
The Russian boxer clocks in at 7ft 2in. Alas, after winning his world championship in 2005, the Beast From The East discovered that the belt he’d won was too small for his 300lb girth. He gave it away.
8 Margo Dydek
“Large Margeâ€, below, is a hard-to-find-a-nice-dress-for 7ft 2in. It’s always been the case since she emerged from the womb as a scary 22-incher, while as a 5ft 11in 13-year-old, she was a rather gawky Polish teenager. Wisely, she turned to basketball. The tallest player in WNBA history also speaks five languages.
9 Louise Moeller
The great Danish jockey weighs in at just 8st. So far, so averagely underweight. However, she is an unfeasible 6ft 1in tall. “People don’t believe me when I tell them I’m a jockey,†she points out. They wouldn’t, would they?
10 Joel Garner
At 6ft 8in the West Indian paceman terrified almost every batsman who faced him. Big Bird (a benign nickname for a fearsome beast) remains the tallest Test bowler. He specialised in the yorker, and being frightening.
Christopher Lister
From the London Metro
He makes Peter Crouch look like a midget and is nicknamed Stretch - but Christopher Lister is still growing.
The towering 18-year-old measures an astonishing 7ft 3in (2.21m) and is thought to be Britain’s tallest teenager.
The beanpole student, from Leeds, cannot even fit through his front door without bending down. His loftiness has cost his parents about £22,000 after they were forced to refurbish the family home to accommodate his enormous frame.
The work included fitting a walk-in shower, extending doors to the ceiling and buying an extra-long bed for him. Christopher, who is only 3in (8cm) shorter than the country’s tallest man, said: ‘I get swamped by people when I go out asking me about my height.’
He wears size 18 shoes, was 4ft (1.21m) tall when he first started school aged four and was as tall as 6ft 7in (2m) Liverpool goal-getter Crouch two years ago.
He also has a nightmare trying to fit into clothes and cars.
The teenager added: ‘When I fill in forms and they ask for any details of disabilities I just write down “Extra tall”.’
Christopher Lister peter crouch tallest man                     
Patrick Barkham
The Guardian
Peter Crouch gets the nation body-popping Hands outstretched, elbows rigid at right angles and jerkily moving to an imaginary beat, it is the goal celebration-cum-dance craze that is shaking the nation.
From Burnham-on-Crouch to Crouch End, people are doing the Crouch. The 6ft 7in England striker premiered his own unique version of robotics at the Beckhams’ lavish World Cup party just over a week ago. While Wayne Rooney gingerly wiggled his metatarsal and Rio Ferdinand archly clicked his fingers on the mirrored dancefloor, the gangly Liverpool forward was head and shoulders above his peers as he shape-shifted to James Brown’s funky beat.
But supporters really twitched to attention on Tuesday night, when England met Hungary in their penultimate friendly before the tournament in Germany. At first, Sven’s starlets failed to shine with their predictable adoption of Brazilian forward Bebeto’s baby-rocking goal routine to mark John Terry’s headed goal. It was, admittedly, in a good cause: his girlfriend has just given birth to twins. Then Peter Crouch took to the field and promptly upstaged his more celebrated team-mates. Spinning like a top to shoot as accurately as Robin Hood, he scored an immaculate goal and celebrated with an eye-popping display: face taut with concentration, he mimicked a robot as he moved one way, then the other. Was it a stick insect after too many coffees? A beanpole spasm in the breeze? Or was it the stirring sight of the best kind of English hero - the unheralded kind - whose unpredictable skills might just bring home the World Cup on Sunday July 9?
As Crouch shuffled, a collective gasp passed through the watching millions. Instead of anguishing over the merits of 4-1-4-1, or whether Stevie Gerrard should be stuck in the hole, England fans were suddenly thinking, hell, with moves like that we can win this thing.
What inspired Crouch to become lord of the dance? England were still World Cup holders when the very first precursors of robotics took hold among the gangs of Los Angeles and New York. American kids invented locking and popping, which became part of the US disco mainstream in the Seventies as Charlie Robot performed “the robot” on the Soul Train TV programme. And Crouch was still in nappies when Jeffrey Daniels of Shalamar became the first man to appear on British television popping his body. Soon, everywhere - from Tramp to the Cub Scout disco - reverberated to the pop and lock of robotics. Crouch may not have learned his moves in the cradle.
According to Paul Gascoigne - former holder of the best England goal celebration for his “dentist’s chair” - the dance is a riposte to critics who first jeered and then sneered that Crouch was a stiff, predictable, robotic sort of player.
Howard Tam, a street dancer and teacher with the Foundationz Cru, is not too impressed with Crouch’s robotics. But it is, he concedes, difficult to get a robotic rhythm when you are not performing to music. Robotics is not about how you start, it is about how you stop. “If he wants to do it properly he’s got to be a lot harder when he hits his moves and he’s got to stop faster. When you stop your movements that’s when what we call “the hit” comes. That goes with the body-popping as well,” says Tam. “You’ve got to be loose, then you’ve got to be rigid. Where he is changing direction with his arms going up and down, it’s got to be a lot more forceful. It’s got to shake the dancefloor [or the football pitch]. There’s got to be more force.”
Lacking a memorable official World Cup song, England have at least stumbled upon a dance move to galvanise the fans. He’s got the world at his feet and if England’s tall, thin hope can do the Crouch six or seven times on the pitch in the coming month, we will all be dancing in the streets.
peter crouch world cupTallest Footballer
Peter Crouch is the tallest professional footballer in the Uk at 6ft 7.
Recently signed to Liverpool for £7 million, he is worth over £30,000 per centimetre.
Graeme Taylor says of Crouch:
“Everyone simply talks about his height, because he’s 6ft 7in, as if that’s all there is to him. But I can assure everyone he is very good technically and his touch will be as good as the other Liverpool players, there is no doubt about that.
“He’s had to live with jibes about his height and I’m so pleased for him because this boy can play.”
“Look at his touch, look at his passing, look at his control, how he lays people in, how he holds off defenders, that’s the sort of player we are talking about.”
“There are too many people who will not look at him just because he’s very tall. But look at Jan Koller, one of the best Czech strikers around - he’s 6ft 7in too.”
jibes peter crouch professional footballerSearch
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