Robot breaks human half-marathon world record in China race

It was not even close as a bright-red Chinese humanoid named “Lightning” lived up to its name in a half-marathon pitting humans against robots, smoking its competition on Sunday.

BEIJING — It was not even close as a bright-red Chinese humanoid named “Lightning” lived up to its name in a half-marathon pitting humans against robots, smoking its competition on Sunday.

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The bipedal humanoid, developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor, blazed through the 13-mile race in just 50 minutes, 26 seconds, besting all 12,000 human competitors and even surpassing the human world record for a half-marathon, set by Ugandan long-distance runner Jacob Kiplimo in Lisbon last month, by nearly seven minutes.

Lightning was slowed down only slightly when it crashed into a railing near the end of the race, with the machine helped back up, recovering to make a dramatic finish.