We had an incredible time at the annual AKC Fast CAT Invitational held in Wilmington, OH. The 2025 Invitational took place between October 15 and October 18, and saw the fastest five qualifying dogs of each breed invited to compete in the event. Our Belgian Tervuren, Halo, came in second place behind three-time champion, Argo (see how we prepared for the Invitational here!).
Fast CAT is a relatively new, exciting, and fast-growing dog sport, which measures the pure speed of dogs over 100 yards. The dogs chase a lure down the track in an attempt to run as quickly as possible against the stopwatch.
To gain a deeper understanding of just how quickly these dogs were running – and to see how different breeds stack up against one another – we decided to dive into the published results from the final runs, which took place on October 17 and October 18. In this article, we’ll provide some insights into what the data can tell us from the Invitational.
Methodology
The data in this article relies on the Best of Breed results for the 2025 AKC Fast CAT Invitational, as published by the AKC after the event.
The Invitational is broken into Preliminary runs and Final runs. In the Preliminary runs, dogs have two attempts (across different days) to qualify for the Final. A maximum of five dogs per breed run in the Preliminaries, with two dogs in each breed advancing to the Final. This article uses the winning time for each breed in the Final.
There are pros and cons to using this data for ranking the ‘fastest’ dog breeds. All dogs in this analysis were running on the same track with the same lure, which helps for fair comparisons. However, there are a couple of caveats; factors such as ambient temperature, time of day, wind direction and wind speed could conceivably play a part in faster (or slower) times. Additionally, the sample size is simply the winning dog of each breed at this event – for example, some dogs may have been invited but been unable to participate in the event.
How fast was your favorite breed?
Which dog breed was the fastest?
It probably comes as little surprise that the Greyhound and Whippet were the two fastest breeds by a significant margin.
The winning Greyhound, Fritz, ran 36.45 mph. That is evidently very fast, but Fritz is set to qualify for next year’s Invitational with an average speed pushing 38 mph – this probably demonstrates that conditions were not perfect in Wilmington for outright top speed (there was a gusty headwind at times throughout the event, which would cause dogs to slow slightly).
The top 10 fastest dog breeds are listed below:
- Greyhound – 36.45 mph
- Whippet – 36.30 mph
- All American Dogs (Large) – 31.84 mph
- Borzoi – 31.56 mph
- Belgian Malinois – 30.75 mph
- All American Dogs (Medium) – 30.73 mph
- Saluki – 30.66 mph
- Sloughi – 29.42 mph
- Border Collie – 29.10 mph
- Labrador Retriever – 29.10 mph
How fast did popular breeds run?
The top five most popular breeds (by AKC registration numbers) performed as follows (overall breed ranking in parentheses):
- French Bulldog – 22.93 mph (140th overall)
- Labrador Retriever – 29.10 mph (10th)
- Golden Retriever – 27.02 mph (37th)
- German Shepherd – 28.15 mph (18th)
- Poodle (Large) – 26.54 mph (40th)
In conclusion
We hope you enjoyed this look at the 2025 Fast CAT Invitational. It was great to see so many different dogs and their handlers participating in this event. Dog sports should be fun for all involved, and our time in Ohio was definitely enjoyable. We met a lot of amazing dog-handler teams, and we are optimistic that we will be back with Halo in 2026!
Thank you to the AKC for their organization of the event, and for publishing the data and making it available on their website. You can learn more about Fast CAT, including how to get your dog involved, by visiting their Fast CAT hub.