With a dizzying eight-second drop down a ramp built off the side of a 22-storey building, Brazilian skateboarding legend Sandro Dias, 50, fulfilled a longtime dream and smashed two world records.

Dias, six-time world champion in vert (halfpipe) skateboarding, dropped into the colossal ramp on Thursday after months of intense training and years of dreaming.

Guinness World Records certified he had set new records for the highest drop (60 meters) and highest speed (103 kilometres or 64 miles per hour) reached on a skateboard off a temporary quarter pipe.

Dias told AFP in an interview that he had been inspired by the curved facade of an "iconic building" in the southern city of Porto Alegre, which he first saw in the eighties.

"I was a kid, and the imagination of any skater who sees it goe

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