You against the clock
The cheetah wins the sprint in 5.95 seconds. The elephant beats you too, without looking like it runs. But over a kilometre, you beat the cheetah: the fastest land animal has never been measured running that far.
How fast are you?First, you
Pick your age to see the usual time of children your age, measured in German schools. If you ever timed your own run, enter it: the race uses that instead.
A 10-year-old
If you do not know it, keep your age's usual number.
Empty means the page's estimate from your 50-metre time.
Your 100 metres: 17.4 seconds. Arithmetic: 50 metres in 9.4 seconds, times 1.85.
Your kilometre, at the 9-minute-test pace: 6:11.
At ten, half the boys run 50 metres between 9.1 and 9.5 seconds, and half the girls between 9.3 and 9.7.
The usual number is the page's own arithmetic, not a measurement: 50 metres times 1.85. The second half has no standing start, so it runs quicker than the first; the German study shows the 100 metres can be guessed well from 50, but gives no formula. Only a stopwatch, and a friend with a phone, gives you your true time.
The race
Tick the animals you think beat you over 100 metres. Usain Bolt runs too, as a witness: his world record is 9.58 seconds.
Stopwatch means a time measured in a race. Pace means arithmetic from a measured top speed: 100 divided by the speed, with no start. Unknown means nobody has measured it.
Sarah, aged 11, Cincinnati Zoo: 100 metres in 5.95 seconds, peaking at 98 km/h. Live Science, 2012
World record over 110 yards (100.58 m): 6.66 seconds, carrying a rider, from starting gates. Ontario Racing, 2024
Phelan, the fastest dog of the American final: 100 yards in 6.346 seconds. American Kennel Club, 2020
Measurements span 11.3 to 17 metres per second; no reliable maximum exists. Daley et al. 2016, J. Exp. Biol.
The 100 km/h top is “alleged”, the study's own word; measured is the endurance: 11 km in 10 minutes. Lindstedt et al. 1991, Nature
42 Asian elephants on video reach 6.8 metres per second, that is 25 km/h. Hutchinson et al. 2003, Nature
Nobody has timed a hen sprinting. On a treadmill hens hold only 3–5 km/h, for minutes. Rose et al. 2016, Sci. Rep.
The pronghorn’s ghost crosses first, but ghosts carry no stopwatch: its time is arithmetic from an “alleged” 100 kilometres per hour.
On the usual ten-year-old time, the cheetah, horse, dog, ostrich, pronghorn and elephant beat you. The hen stays a question mark.
Hen — ? — unknown
The pronghorn’s ghost crosses first, but ghosts carry no stopwatch: its time is arithmetic from an “alleged” 100 kilometres per hour.
Stopwatch means a time measured in a race. Pace means arithmetic from a measured top speed: 100 divided by the speed, with no start. Unknown means nobody has measured it.
Speed and time
No creature starts from zero at top speed, and none holds it for the whole hundred metres. So the stopwatch always reads worse than the arithmetic from a top speed, and top-speed tables mix measurements made in different ways.
93 kilometres per hour covers 100 metres in 3.86 seconds, if you run that way from the first step. Sarah, the 11-year-old Cincinnati cheetah, ran a real hundred in 5.95 seconds: with the start and the tired last metres. The gap between 3.9 and 5.95 is this page's lesson. As for 112, the old books took the highest published value, 101–121, and printed it as fact. The new measurements, by GPS and on the track, say 93–98.
The study praising its endurance calls the 100 km/h top “alleged”, and a naturalist quoted in 1983 said the pronghorn runs at 65, not 95. This race takes 100 as a working guess and shows it as one. What is solidly measured is the endurance: 11 kilometres in 10 minutes, a 65 km/h average.
On ostriches, chased by quad bike and tracked by GPS, the measured maximum was 11.3 metres per second, that is 41 km/h. In 1979, by film or by the car's speedometer, it came out as 12–17. The 2016 authors write plainly that no reliable, directly measured maximum exists. The newspaper 70 sits above every measurement. That is why the ostrich runs here as a band, not a line.
The hen's “9 miles per hour” has no study we could find behind it. Science has measured hens on treadmills, where they hold 3–5 km/h for minutes, but a speed held for minutes is not the speed of a frightened dash. Putting the treadmill in place of the sprint would compare unlike things. The hen stays a question mark until somebody times one — perhaps you.
The rule of thumb: race times compare with race times, and top speeds with top speeds. The rest is arithmetic, useful, but named as such.
One kilometre
The cheetah does not lose by a whisker. It never starts: of 367 runs measured with GPS collars, the longest never reached 600 metres. Pick the kilometre's winner before you see the bars.
Nobody has timed the dog's, the ostrich's, the elephant's or the hen's kilometre, so they sit this race out.
Nobody has timed the dog's, the ostrich's, the elephant's or the hen's kilometre, so they sit this race out.
The game
You are ten and you run 100 metres in about 17 seconds. Eight statements, three possible answers: some questions have no answer yet, and “nobody knows” is a good answer.
Every question and answer, briefly:
Measure it yourself
This page trusts the stopwatch more than the arithmetic. Three weekend protocols, from easy to hard.
Measure 100 metres with a long tape or counted paces on a sports field. Start from standing at your friend's signal with the phone. Run twice and keep the better time, as the study's schools did.
Push two sticks into the ground 10 metres apart. Film the hen as she dashes past them and divide 10 by the seconds in the footage. If you get a number, you measured something no study we read has measured.
America has an event for every dog: 100 yards after a lure, timed electronically. If you time your dog over 91.44 metres, the converter below gives its speed and places it next to Phelan.
Sources and method
Every lane wears a badge. Stopwatch means a time measured over the race distance or scaled from a neighbouring one: 110 yards are 100.58 metres, and 100 yards are 91.44. Pace means 100 divided by a measured top speed; the start is missing from the arithmetic, and the page says so on every lane. Unknown means we found no measurement and invented none.
Your usual time is the page's arithmetic from the measured German children's 50-metre sprint: times 1.85, because the second half has no standing start. Your kilometre comes from their 9-minute test. Both are approximations, and the page sends you to the stopwatch.
What we do not know we say out loud: the hen's sprint speed, the ostrich's reliable maximum, and the dog's, ostrich's, elephant's and hen's kilometre. The full dossier of every figure sits in our drawer; here you see the studies and records, with links that work.
The runner pictograms are drawn for this page.
Each photograph's author, source and licence sit beneath it, in the caption.