Chinese Robot Breaks Usain Bolt's 100m World Record Time — Then Smashes Into A Wall

By Chris Smith

Three humanoid robots racing at the World Humanoid Robot Games in China. YouTube/NBC News China held its second World Humanoid Robot Games event in late August 2026 at Beijing's National Speed Skating Oval, an event meant to display the country's advances in and commitment to robotics. The field has attracted plenty of research and development — not to mention interest — in recent years, particularly after the arrival of large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini. Similar AI technology may provide the brains to humanoid robots. But the 2026 Robot Games in China made the news not because of new robotics innovations that would allow a humanoid to fold clothes faster than before. Instead, the event surprised the world with robots that could run the 100-meter race even faster than humans. A few robots beat Usain Bolt's 2009 world record (9.58 seconds) several times, with the