World champion Luke Littler’s hopes of defending his World Grand Prix title were dashed as he fell to a shock first-round defeat by Luke Woodhouse in Leicester.
Littler, 19, had been looking to bounce back from his quarter-final exit to Jonny Clayton at the World Series of Darts Finals just over a week ago.
But despite taking the first set, he was distinctly below par throughout the best-of-three encounter, averaging just 82.41.
That allowed Woodhouse to level the match and deliver a checkout of 75 to win the deciding set 3-1 in legs.
Woodhouse will face 2022 runner-up Nathan Aspinall in the last 16, who edged past Dutch debutant Kevin Doets 2-1.
Earlier on Monday, six-time winner Michael van Gerwen lost five legs out of the last six as 2024 semi-finalist Ryan Joyce fought back to win 2-1.
England’s Joyce will play Dutchman Danny Noppert, who advanced past Germany’s Niko Springer by the same scoreline.
Elsewhere, Wales’ Gerwyn Price only lost a single leg as he comfortably beat Poland’s Sebastian Bialecki 2-0 to set up a meeting with England’s Ross Smith, who came from behind to triumph 2-1 against Scotland’s Cameron Menzies.
Welshman Clayton edged past Krzysztof Ratajski 2-1, and he will take on the Netherlands’ Wessel Nijman, who overcame 2018 world champion Rob Cross in straight sets.
Double Olympic swimming champion Tatjana Smith is coming out of retirement with the aim of competing at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
The 29-year-old, who is South Africa’s most decorated Olympian, said she was “missing the water”, adding her return “feels a little crazy, a little scary and very exciting all at once”.
Smith, who won 100m breaststroke gold and 200m silver at the Paris 2024 Games, to add to 200m breaststroke gold and 100m silver at Tokyo 2020, is aiming to compete over a new Olympic distance of 50m.
“It’s definitely a new challenge, a new event, a new race, but also a new me,” she said.
“For the first time, I am choosing swimming and I am choosing the event and I am choosing a new event, that has no history but to try and write some new history.
“LA 2028 is the goal. It is not a promise. I still have to build a race, qualify and earn my place back on those blocks.”
The former 200m breaststroke world record holder initially retired from swimming after the 2024 Olympics.
Former world number one doubles player and six-time Grand Slam doubles champion Joe Salisbury has retired from professional tennis.
Londoner Salisbury chose this month’s US Open as his final event and reached the semi-finals with his long-time partner Rajeev Ram, who had also decided to retire.
The venue was fitting, as in 2023 Salisbury and Ram became the first pair in history to win three consecutive US Open men’s doubles titles.
Salisbury is Britain’s most successful men’s doubles player of the Open era. He also won the 2020 Australian Open with Ram, and two mixed doubles titles with Desirae Krawczyk.
The 34-year-old says he has been thinking about his future for a while, and is now “very happy with the decision”.
“Tennis has been my life for as long as I can remember and I have been incredibly fortunate to have had all the opportunities, experiences and success that I have,” he posted on Instagram.
“To be able to travel the world and call playing tennis my job has been a dream come true and I never believed I could have lived the life and had the career that I have.
“I gave it my all and know I can be proud and look back with no regrets.”
Salisbury took a three-month break at the start of this year, having told BBC Sport about the anxiety which had been affecting him on tour.
While he did not think it affected his tennis very much, he said it left him with a “feeling of dread” which made life on the road far less enjoyable.
“I had some time off for a few months earlier on in the year – I wasn’t really enjoying being on tour for a few reasons,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live.
“I came back and I didn’t really have a successful year. Then I teamed back up with my partner, Rajeev Ram, who I had all my success in Grand Slam titles [with] so it was great playing with him again and he was retiring at the US Open this year.
“I thought I could go on [until the] end of this year, maybe next year but I felt like it was nice to finish my career playing with him at the US Open where we had our success, and we had a good run making the semi-finals to finish.”
Salisbury finishes his career with 17 tour level titles, including the season-ending ATP Finals of 2022 and 2023.
World champion Wu Yize fell in the third round of the English Open as Liam Davies scored an eye-catching 4-1 victory in Brentwood.
Welsh prospect Davies, 20, opened up a 3-0 lead on his way to the first ranking event quarter-final of his career, helped by a break of 105 in the second frame, then completed his victory as China’s Wu struggled to find his dynamic best form.
Tantalisingly, Davies will face compatriot Mark Williams, the three-time world champion, in the last eight on Friday evening.
Williams, still a major force on the baize at the age of 51, had breaks of 76, 103 and 63 in a late-night 4-1 victory over England’s Barry Hawkins.
Mark Selby, who was runner-up at last week’s British Open and won the China Open in August, had his hopes of reaching another final ended by a 4-3 defeat against fellow former world champion Kyren Wilson.
Selby led 2-0 in the all-English tussle after an early break of 112 but then lost the next three frames. He dragged himself level, but Wilson trebled in the yellow to effectively make sure of victory in the decider.
England’s Judd Trump, newly deposed as world number one, edged a tense decider against Scot Anthony McGill to take a 4-3 victory.
Trump will face a quarter-final against Shaun Murphy who was taken the distance after midnight by Pang Junxu before racing through the deciding frame with a 103 break.
Ali Carter had a highest break of 75 as he completed a 4-2 win over Gong Chenzhi, Zhou Yuelong made a 141 in his 4-2 victory over Chinese compatriot Yuan Sijun, and Ding Junhui beat Joe O’Connor 4-1.
Shaun Wright-Phillips has revealed that he has been speaking to Strictly winner Karen Carney for advice ahead of his own debut on the BBC competition later this month
20:03, 10 Sep 2026Updated 20:04, 10 Sep 2026
Shaun Wright-Phillips has been speaking to Karen Carney for advice ahead of Strictly(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Ray Burmiston)
Shaun Wright-Phillips has played for Manchester City, Chelsea and earned 36 caps for England – but swapping the pitch for the ballroom could prove to be his biggest challenge yet.
Fellow footballer Karen Carney knows a thing or two about making the switch, having gone all the way and lifted the Glitterball last year. She’s been on hand to give her pal a few pointers. “She said to just dive straight into it and don’t hold back,” Shaun, 44, explains. “So I’ll take that advice. I’m going to go for it and do the best I can.”
For Shaun, who scored six international goals between 2004 and 2010 and played club football under the watch of titans such as Kevin Keegan and José Mourinho, Strictly is proving to be a whole different ball game.
“It’s something that’s definitely out of my comfort zone,” he says. “I don’t get overly nervous in general, but this is obviously something that’s really new to me.”
Shaun’s family and friends, including his famous footballer dad, Ian Wright, are used to him busting a move on the dancefloor, but usually after a few beers. He is now bracing himself for their reaction when he takes to the floor every weekend.
“I’m sure they’ll be giving me as much feedback as the Strictly judges,” he laughs. “They’re used to seeing me dance at parties, but this will be the first time they’ve seen me dance while sober.
“Everyone was crazy excited when they found out I was taking part. And then all of a sudden my inbox was filled with friends and family trying to get their live show ticket orders in! I’ve received a really nice amount of support so far.”
Over the course of his career, Shaun played for play for Manchester City, Chelsea, Queens Park Rangers and England. He retired from the pitch in 2019, and since then, has carved out a career as a football pundit, appearing across BBC, ITV and Sky Sports.
Last year, he competed on Cooking With The Stars alongside comedian and Outnumbered star Hugh Dennis, former Love Island winner Ekin-Su Culculoglu and This Morning’s Kelly Hoppen.
Shaun became the tenth name announced to compete and the BBC Saturday night favourite will return to screens in just a matter of weeks.
When it was confirmed that he had signed up, he said:: “Dancing is in my blood—but mainly at family events! Strictly is definitely outside my comfort zone, but I’m super excited to get started and really looking forward to the challenge!”
BEIJING: A week after his robot outran humanity’s fastest man, Jack Guo is already chasing a harder goal.
TianGong Ultra stunned spectators at the World Humanoid Robot Games when it covered 100 meters in 8.64 seconds, almost a full second faster than Usain Bolt’s world record. Behind the feat were days of round-the-clock testing and repairing battered robots between races.
“When it started smoothly and got past 50 meters, that was when I finally relaxed,” said Guo, who leads development of Ultra and Omni, a smaller model used in 400m races, at the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, known as X-Humanoid.
Just a week later, the bespectacled 34-year-old engineer is already focused on a bigger challenge.
“We want to turn high performance into high reliability and high usability,” he told Reuters in his first interview with foreign media.
The record-breaking run offers a rare window into China’s growing lead in humanoid robotics, where state-backed research, deep supply chains and intense competition are accelerating advances in machine mobility. Yet Guo’s next goal underscores a harder task facing the industry as it struggles to turn dazzling demonstrations into useful workers.
Inside the workshop
X-Humanoid sits in Yizhuang, a high-tech development zone in Beijing’s southeast and one of China’s main robotics clusters. Long home to automakers, the district now boasts a robot sales center and even a robot-themed restaurant, part of the capital’s push to showcase the industry.
An engineer works near Tiangong Omni humanoid robots in the research and testing area of the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, also known as X-Humanoid, in Beijing, China, September 4, 2026. (Reuters)
The first-floor showroom traces generations of TianGong robots, including one that still wears the vest from a winning half-marathon run last year.
On the ninth floor, white Ultra and Omni humanoids stand suspended in metal frames. One wears a red “Champion TianGong” headband.
During a Reuters visit, engineers repaired and tested robots, with one removing a head cover, another tightening a leg, and others running walking trials.
In the adjoining office, Guo’s team develops software before testing it on physical machines.
Established in November 2023, X-Humanoid is backed by state-owned and private investors including robotics firm UBTech, along with domestic tech giants Xiaomi and Baidu. It develops hardware, motion-control software and AI for the wider industry while commercialising its own robots.
X-Humanoid has not disclosed how many of its own robots it has sold or deployed commercially.
Its customers include universities, research institutes and companies exploring industrial applications. At Foton Cummins’ engine factory in Beijing, the company’s robots have been trialled moving boxes, with its Tianyi 2.0 robot lifting 8-12 kg boxes onto shelves in what the factory described as an early-stage exploration.
Useful work begins
Ultra was not originally designed to win a race. It started as an experiment to push the boundaries of humanoid movement.
Guo likens today’s humanoids to the earliest cars: first make them controllable, then pair reliable bodies with smarter AI “brains” capable of handling complex tasks on their own.
He said the immediate challenge was making the robot body and movement-control system stable and reliable for everyday use. Developing the AI needed for more complex autonomous tasks would take longer.
Making a robot run develops generalized mobility, improving its ability to cope with different terrain.
An engineer works near Tiangong Omni humanoid robots in the research and testing area of the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, also known as X-Humanoid, in Beijing, China, September 4, 2026. (Reuters)
The smaller Omni has already shown what that can mean in practice. In an internal test this year, it climbed from the first floor to the 17th floor of X-Humanoid’s headquarters.
Guo expects smaller humanoids to find early roles in commercial services and light industry, while Ultra could eventually perform outdoor inspection or emergency rescue.
One major challenge is braking. Ultra weighs 75kg and at top speed can exceed 17 meters per second. At the Games, a crash mat sat beyond a short run-off area, leaving sprinting robots in the 100m races to slam into the barrier.
Future versions could be lighter, brake harder and adopt a safer posture, Guo said.
Conquering speed
Ultra arrived at the Games armed with three running strategies trained in simulation. One was battle-tested, two faster on paper but less proven.
Each strategy is a trained motion-control system that continuously adjusts joints and balance, allowing the robot to sprint upright without an operator directing every step.
Ultra used a different program in each race, running 9.39 seconds in the preliminary, 8.86 in the semifinal, and 8.64 in the final.
Between races, engineers returned to their test site to push faster programs harder and adjust navigation and running controls. Engineers pulled several all-nighters, sometimes testing into the following day before returning to the venue.
Pushed to their limits, robots stumbled, lost balance and crashed, forcing teams to roll out backup machines while repair crews scrambled to fix the damaged ones.
Earlier in development, the breakdowns were even more dramatic. “Legs broke, waists broke,” Guo said.
A late surge
Even on the morning of the final, the team was testing a newly trained running program. It worked repeatedly during trials, but not on the competition track. Differences between individual robots also created headaches, leaving Guo uneasy before the race.
Ultra’s heavier legs limited early acceleration, but once it passed about 10 meters per second, it could keep building speed and reel in rivals.
The team had shaved roughly half a second from its starting response by the semifinal, Guo estimated. From there, attention shifted to outright speed.
In the final, a faster reaction time and late acceleration allowed Ultra to pull off a more decisive overtake.
Backstage, the team celebrated. At the closing ceremony, a row of TianGong humanoids donned red capes emblazoned with “Champion,” some waving pom-poms.
“Finally, I could get a good night’s sleep,” Guo said.
