More than 150 years ago, in the mountains of West Virginia, steel driver John Henry challenged a machine that could drill deeper and faster than any man. As the tale goes, Henry beat that machine but died from exhaustion.
Flash forward to 2026, and now a machine is doing what Henry did — well, sort of.
On Sunday, Lightning, a 5-foot-5-inch, bright red humanoid robot, completed a half-marathon in record time, almost completely on its own. But about 220 yards from the finish line, Lightning slammed into a barricade and fell over, almost as if it was giving up.
Despite the tumble, Lightning got back up with the help of its team and completed the race in just under 51 minutes.
Even with the disruption, Lightning outperformed the current world record holder, Jacob Kiplimo, who completed the half-marathon in 57 minutes, 20 seconds.
Why are there robot races?
People have loved watching machines compete in feats of strength and speed for decades. In the U.S., the show “BattleBots” features teams of engineers that create some honestly menacing-looking machines that rip each other apart. The show was so popular that it beat “South Park” as the most popular show when it first aired on Comedy Central.
China has its own robot combat show and has even begun hosting humanoid robot fights. While combat is impressive, standing and running upright are equally so, demonstrating how quickly scientists have developed robots into untethered, professional runners. A skill that took humans nearly 10 million years to develop has taken robots only a few decades.
Sunday’s race showed how far China’s humanoid robots have come in just a year. A race in 2025 featured less difficult terrain, with fewer slopes and wider turns, The Wall Street Journal reported. But this year’s more difficult challenge wasn’t an issue for the robots, which completed it faster than ever.
Race officials said the course tests robots’ ability to handle what they might see in the real world, calling it “an extreme stress test.” They said some robots still had a hard time, with Unitree, one of China’s top humanoid robot makers, having to load its robot onto a stretcher after it collapsed multiple times on the track.
China has a large lead in robot manufacturing, shipping more than 1,000 humanoid robots, according to The Journal. No American company has shipped more than 500.
Why is there such a push for humanoid robots?
Several countries are betting high on humanoid robots, but no country is betting more than China, as Straight Arrow News has previously reported. It makes sense since China has the most to gain from the technology.
China has maintained its position as the world’s largest manufacturer, but a massive issue could erode its dominance. Following decades of its One-Child Policy, China faces population decline. The sentiment among Chinese people has also exacerbated the problem, as fewer people are less eager to work low-paying manual labor jobs.
Robots could eliminate that issue for China, creating an entire labor force using its massive manufacturing infrastructure. China also understands humanoid robots would benefit every country and being the first country to perfect the tech would give the country massive leverage over others.
“It’s not just a race to build humanoid robots to boost the host country’s domestic productivity,” Adam Dorr, the director of research at RethinkX, a U.S.-based research nonprofit focusing on technology-driven disruptions, told SAN, “but also a race to deploy these into other nations’ markets across the globe. Chinese companies and the Chinese government certainly want to be the ones supplying humanoid robots to all of Africa and Asia.”
Is the US trying to compete with China’s robots?
Companies like Tesla and Figure AI are trying to achieve what China is doing but on a lesser scale. Many U.S. tech companies understand that advanced humanoid robotics will likely be a massive future tech market but they are focusing more on artificial intelligence. Many of them believe that building more advanced AI systems first allows them to create any technology afterward, only much faster.
China also faces political issues that prevent it from keeping pace with the West’s AI dominance. More than 90% of the world’s leading-edge logic chips come from Taiwan. The Chinese government has been negotiating with NVIDIA to purchase some of its newer hardware but has yet to approve the deal.
China has begun aggressively building its own computer chip factories and says it can produce chips good enough for AI. Some experts are skeptical but China expects to reach nearly half of global chip output by 2028.
But as China struggles to keep up with AI output, the country is making it impossible for any other country to match its humanoid-robot capabilities. The country’s strong position in manufacturing and the government’s efforts to boost production have led to significant output and technological advancements. Analysts believe the technology could reshape the world, and China hopes to be the sole distributor of it.
“Robots are the ultimate unlock for civilization,” Dorr previously told SAN.