Who is officially the fastest human ever recorded?

Usain Bolt holds the official world record for the fastest human, running the 100 meters in 9.58 seconds and the 200 meters in 19.19 seconds.

What is the top speed ever reached by a human in athletics?

Usain Bolt reached a top speed of 44.72 km/h (27.8 mph) during his 9.58-second 100-meter world record in 2009.

Are women included in the top 10 fastest humans list?

Typically, top 10 fastest lists by absolute time are dominated by men; the fastest women, like Florence Griffith-Joyner (10.49 seconds), rank much lower overall due to physiological differences.

How is 'fastest human' measured in athletics?

The title is usually determined by the fastest official time in the 100-meter sprint, the shortest and most explosive event, under standardised conditions with legal wind assistance.

Has anyone beaten Usain Bolt's 100-meter record?

No, as of 2025, Usain Bolt's 9.58-second world record from 2009 still stands as the fastest officially ratified time.

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Top 10 Fastest Humans Ever Recorded (Athletics)

Breaking the 9.80-second barrier in the 100 metres represents one of track and field's greatest human achievements—a feat so rare that only a select few sprinters in history have accomplished it. These world-record holders and elite performers have pushed the boundaries of human speed with explosive power, perfect technique, and split-second timing. This ranking showcases the ten fastest humans ever recorded in the sport's most prestigious event, featuring only wind-legal performances that meet international standards and demonstrate sustained excellence under regulation conditions.

2026287 viewsJul 17, 2026 Updated Sep 7, 2026

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#1
Usain Bolt — 9.58 seconds
Usain Bolt's 100m world record of 9.58 seconds, set at the 2009 Berlin World Championships, remains unsurpassed after 16 years, and biomechanists suggest it may endure for decades more. He also holds the 200m world record (19.19s) and won eight Olympic gold medals across Beijing, London, and Rio, making him the most decorated sprinter in history.
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#2
Tyson Gay — 9.69 seconds
Tyson Gay's 9.69 seconds in Shanghai 2009 equaled the then-world record and made him the first man to legally break 9.70 seconds in the US. His personal best matches Yohan Blake's 9.69, but Gay ran his three years earlier, in 2009 versus 2012, making him historically the second-fastest human. He later served a one-year doping ban that disqualified his 4x100m relay medal from that period. He ran his 9.69 at age 27, older than the typical peak age at which most sprinters reach their fastest 100m time.
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#3
Yohan Blake — 9.69 seconds
Yohan Blake matched Tyson Gay's 9.69 seconds at the 2012 Jamaican Trials, becoming the joint-second-fastest sprinter in history at age 22—younger than Gay was by 5 years. His silver medals behind Usain Bolt at London 2012 in both the 100m and 200m confirm he was only ever a fraction behind the greatest ever, but in 2012 he ran 9.69s with a 1.5 m/s tailwind, which is 30% less favorable than the wind conditions Gay had in Shanghai (0.0 m/s).
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#4
Asafa Powell — 9.72 seconds
Asafa Powell held the world record twice (9.77s in 2005, then 9.74s in 2007) before Usain Bolt arrived and set the current mark. He ran sub-9.80 seconds 97 times in his career — the most of any athlete in history — demonstrating extraordinary consistency over more than a decade. His 9.72-second personal best is 0.14 seconds off Bolt's record, and that volume of sub-9.80 runs makes him the most prolific sub-10-second performer in the sport's history.
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#5
Marcell Jacobs — 9.80 seconds
Marcell Jacobs delivered one of the most shocking upsets in Olympic history by winning the Tokyo 2020 100m gold in 9.80 seconds — the only Italian to ever claim an Olympic or world senior 100m title. His rise from a 10.20-second personal best in 2019 to Olympic champion in just two years remains one of the fastest progressions to a major sprint title in the sport's modern history. Jacobs backed up his Olympic triumph with European Championship gold in 2022, proving his performance was no fluke.
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#6
Noah Lyles — 9.784 seconds
Noah Lyles seized the Paris 2024 Olympic 100m gold with a blistering 9.784 seconds — the sixth-fastest legal time ever — winning by a mere five thousandths of a second over Kishane Thompson. His 9.77-second wind-aided performance earlier that year underscored his standing as the fastest active sprinter of the moment, and his Olympic victory cemented him as the showman carrying Usain Bolt's mantle in the sport.
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#7
Kishane Thompson — 9.784 seconds
Kishane Thompson clocked 9.77 seconds in June 2024 — the fastest time of the year before the Paris Olympics — and then matched Noah Lyles stride-for-stride in the Olympic final, losing gold by the thickness of a fingernail (0.005 seconds). At just 23, his consistency across the 2024 season positioned him as one of the sprinters most likely to challenge for the world's fastest-man title through the rest of the decade.
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#8
Maurice Greene — 9.79 seconds
Maurice Greene set the 100m world record of 9.79 seconds in Athens in 1999 — the first sub-9.80 performance by a non-Jamaican and a mark that stood for six years. The 2000 Olympic champion and two-time world champion (1997, 1999) was the most dominant sprinter of his era, winning 12 of 13 major finals. His 9.79-second mark remains the fastest ever by an American at sea level.
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#9
Donovan Bailey — 9.84 seconds
Donovan Bailey’s 9.84 seconds at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics remains a benchmark for explosive speed, winning gold in one of the most electrifying 100m finals ever. His maximum velocity reached 27 mph over 10 meters between 60m and 70m, a split that still ranks among the fastest ever recorded.
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#10
Carl Lewis — 9.86 seconds
Carl Lewis's wind-legal 9.86 seconds at the 1991 Tokyo World Championships set a world record at age 30, an extraordinary feat given typical sprint decline by that age. His career includes nine Olympic gold medals — four in long jump consecutively from 1984 to 1996 — and he is widely hailed as track's greatest all-around athlete. At 9.86, his time is 0.02 seconds slower than Donovan Bailey's 9.84, yet his longevity redefines elite consistency.
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Why 'Wind-Legal' Is the Line That Matters

Every time on this list clears a specific, strict bar: a following wind of no more than 2.0 meters per second, the threshold World Athletics uses to decide whether a sprint performance counts as record-eligible. Run the same race with a stronger tailwind and a sprinter can shave real time off their result — genuine speed, but assisted speed, which is why wind-aided runs, even faster ones, don't appear in official record books or lists like this one. It's a deliberately conservative standard, and it's the reason some of the fastest-looking times ever recorded on a stopwatch don't count for anything historically.

Timing technology is the other invisible variable behind these numbers. Fully automatic electronic timing, accurate to a hundredth of a second, only became the mandatory standard for record purposes in the 1970s; earlier hand-timed marks carried enough built-in measurement uncertainty that direct comparison across eras is unreliable. Every performance on this list benefits from the same modern, standardized measurement — part of why they're genuinely comparable to each other in a way that times from decades earlier often aren't.

Where a 100m Is Actually Won or Lost

The 100 meters breaks down into distinct phases that reward different physical strengths: the reaction to the gun, a drive phase where sprinters are accelerating out of the blocks, and a top-speed or fly phase in the race's second half. Sprinters don't all win the same way — some carry an advantage out of the blocks and hold on, while others are still accelerating past the halfway mark and separate from the field in the final third of the race, a function of stride length and mechanics as much as raw power.

That's part of why comparing final times across different sprinters can undersell how differently their races were actually run. Two athletes can cross the line a hundredth of a second apart while having gotten there through almost opposite race strategies — one built on an explosive start, the other on a longer, more gradual build to top speed.