Last year they ran 21 seconds. This year they say 9.39.

In 2025, the first World Humanoid Robot Games were smaller and slower. The winning 100 meters took 21.5 seconds. This year the organizer says Tiangong Ultra ran it in 9.39, which would be faster than Usain Bolt. Honor says a trial the day before was even quicker, 9.32.

Those are their numbers. We were not in the oval with a stopwatch.

The same heat that produced the 9.39 also produced a Unitree in 12.41 seconds, last in that heat. Reuters has Unitree in the kickboxing photos too. So the field is not one machine. It is a pile of very different ones, some that look like the future of sport and some that still look like a prototype that got invited.

The 400 meters split in two. Tien Kung Ultra, the big-group winner, was reported at 38.15 seconds, under the human world record. Tien Kung Omni won a smaller final in 45.66 with both hands covering its face. Engineers say that pose was not copied from a child. The robot learned it because pumping its arms cooked the shoulders. Online, of course, it is a shy kid.

Then there is everything that is not a straight line. Tianjiao's obstacle gold took more than four minutes. In the fighting ring, Global Times watched robots stand back up with a broken limb and then walk the wrong way, as if the opponent had simply vanished. A training clip of a runner folding into a padded wall had already gone around the world before the opening ceremony even started.

So the comparison is not China versus America, and it is not robot versus Bolt in some final sense. It is last August versus this August, and track versus everything else. The sprint got fast. The rest of the body is still catching up.