The Makati City police placed under its custody sport climber Alain Robert after the Frenchman scaled a 181-meter tall building in the city’s Central Business District on Tuesday morning.
Robert, internationally known as the “French Spider-Man,” went up the GT International Tower along Ayala Avenue around 11 a.m. and scaled the walls for more than an hour without using safety devices.
Makati City police commander Rogelio Simon said Robert was brought to their station command post for “causing nuisance and for threatening the safety of people in the area.”
As of press time, the police were preparing a case against Robert, who was initially brought to the hospital for medication.
Authorities said Robert,56, may be charged with trespassing or public disturbance.
Robert is known for scaling skyscrapers without using climbing equipment, except for a small bag of chalk and a pair of climbing shoes.
He set the record in the Guinness Book of World Records in 2011 for the fastest time to climb the 828-meter Burj Khalifa tower”•the tallest building in the world”•in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
He also received the BrandLaureate World Records Awards 2010 in recognition of his extraordinary and spectacular feats in his area of specialization.
Robert gained notoriety for being arrested around the world for climbing towering structures including the Eiffel Tower in his native France.
Clad in dark long sleeves and yellow pants with a camera attached on his head, Robert was seen hoisting himself from one floor to another, video taken from one of the offices inside the GT Tower building showed.
The glass-walled skyscraper is the 7th tallest building in the Makati central business district with 43 stories at a height of 217.20 meters, information from real estate data mining company Emporis showed.
The French national was seen descending from the building’s facade shortly before noon and was arrested by local authorities.
Robert, who has been climbing buildings since he was 11, made a Guinness World Record for “most buildings climbed” after he conquered 121 structures in 2015.
“Climbing is [not just] my passion but also my philosophy of life,” Robert said on his website.
“I have never thought about giving up on my childhood dream. I already knew that climbing was for me as important as eating or breathing,” he said.
Other landmarks the French climber earlier scaled were the Sydney Opera House, Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers, and New York’s Empire State Building. J
