Usain Bolt launches first champagne that can be drunk in space during zero-gravity flight over France
Olympic legend soars away to taste and toast a piece of history - and take part in his first ever weightless sprint
ONE small sup for a man, one giant lope for mankind.
Usain Bolt soared away in a special plane - to test the world's first zero-gravity champagne and make a sprinting comeback in, yes, a genuine space race.
A stellar star needs something posher than a Stella.
So the eight-time Olympic gold medallist, who now plays football for A-League side Central Coast Mariners Down Under, agreed to fly high in an aircraft that recreates weightlessness.
Jamaican Bolt, 32, has always claimed to have had a close bond with fans.
But on this occasion he struggled to keep his feet on the ground as he floated around like an astronaut in the Airbus Zero-G above Reims in France.
Usually the plane is for sober scientific purposes, not for off-beat alcohol experiments.
But today Bolt was recruited to taste and toast a piece of history - via a bottle that eliminates gravity, enabling astronauts and space tourists of the future to drink bubbly that's out of this world.
The athletics icon showed who was the daddy as he tasted the Champagne from Mumm, a major French company.
And Bolt was grinning even wider when he got down on his marks for a zero-gravity sprint with French astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy and Interior designer Octave de Gaulleas, who created the "Mumm Grand Cordon Stellar".
Today's event is an off-shoot of the battle to send some of the world's wealthiest tourists and thrill-seekers into space.
The main players are billionaire Brit Richard Branson and two Americans, Amazon Inc founder Jeff Bezos and .