A cheetah runs (briefly) at around 70mph, a bear at another speed and so on. What is the maximum speed at which a human can run?

Usain Bolt won the last Olympic's 100m run with the world record: 9,72 sec.

So, 37 km/h which is about 23 miles /hour average. His top speed was probably a bit higher.

This is a common but wrong way of calculating this as it's from a standing start. The clue was in the question, which clearly talked about the top speed achieved, albeit only briefly. Hussain Bolt is still accelerating when he crosses the finishing line of the 100m.

One would really want to have Bolt run until he got no faster and began to slow down through exhaustion, then log the highest speed attained at any point. Achievable with modern technology, but not done, as far as I can determine, as we are all obsessed with times from a standing start over a variety of distances.

If anyone knows the answer to this I would love to know.