The machine took its final strides inside the National Speed Skating Oval in Beijing — a venue known locally as the 'Ice Ribbon' for its resemblance to the skating ribbon from the 2022 Winter Olympics — and the clocks read 9.32 seconds. This was not a human race. It was Lightning, a humanoid robot standing 169 centimeters tall and weighing 45 kilograms, developed by Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor, during a trial phase before the opening ceremony of the 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games (WHRG), the second edition of the event that is turning Beijing into the global arena for humanoid robotics. The time beats by 0.26 seconds the historic mark of 9.58 seconds set by Usain Bolt in Berlin in 2009, which seemed untouchable. Lightning reached a peak speed of 14.5 meters per second during the run.
The event that hosted the record is the second edition of the WHRG, held in Beijing from August 22 to 26, 2026. The first edition, in the same venue in August 2025, brought together 280 teams and more than 500 robots from 16 countries, competing in 26 categories ranging from boxing to medication sorting. That edition saw human runners constantly stumbling: many fell during preliminary rounds, some could not complete the race at all. Dynamic bipedal locomotion was still in its embryonic phase — balancing, weight transfer between limbs, and reacting to the unexpected were open research problems, not commercial capabilities. A year later, the evolutionary leap was staggering.
Lightning was not the only star. In the official race, the Tiangong Ultra, developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center in partnership with UBTech, took first place, overtaking Lightning near the finish line after starting behind. The Tiangong Ultra, from the current generation of the Tiangong line launched in April 2024, is the world's first humanoid capable of dynamic running driven purely by electric power — it does not use hydraulic motors, as earlier generations did. Its purely electric design is considered a watershed moment for commercial viability, because electric motors are cheaper, lighter, and easier to maintain than hydraulic systems. The Tiangong Ultra had already completed a half-marathon in 2 hours and 40 minutes, another historic mark.
What makes Lightning's achievement particularly interesting goes beyond the clock. The Honor robot operates with actuators generating 400 newton-meters of torque per joint and uses a liquid cooling system in the lower limbs — an engineering solution that keeps motor temperatures within safe limits during short-duration explosive efforts. Honor, which recently announced its entry into the American smartphone market, is using Lightning as a technology showcase to signal its transition from mobile device manufacturing to embodied AI robotics. It is a strategy similar to how Tesla used Optimus to validate its artificial intelligence and motor control capabilities before scaling to mass production.
What to watch for in the coming days of the WHRG is whether robots will continue improving and whether companies outside China will begin to offer competitive responses. So far, China dominates both the robotics manufacturing infrastructure and government incentives in the sector. The Science and Technology Department of the Tongzhou District People's Government in Beijing has already announced a support package of 17 million yuan (approximately 2.4 million dollars) for humanoid robot companies, a clear signal that the Chinese government wants to consolidate Beijing as the world capital of robotics. The global humanoid robot market, according to estimates from firms like Grand View Research, is expected to exceed 30 billion dollars by 2030. But the speed with which robots are running — literally — suggests that the timeline may be even tighter than anticipated.
Sources: The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Verge
✓ Independent sources cross-checked and verified before publishing
