The winner of the women’s marathon did a great job, breaking way out in front about half way through. I was predicting she probably would crash, but not only did she not, but when she got to the stadium she kept running victory laps.
Anyway, at least twice that I saw, and the first time the commentator mentioned it, she reached into her jersey and pulled out what looked like a capsule, sniffed it and tossed it away.
What the heck would that have been? Certainly she got tested for all drugs at the end, so obviously not that. The commentator hazarded a guess that it might be smelling salts. Never heard of anybody using that. In the many races I ran, including ten marathons, I never came across this.
She ate the carbs and the announcers seemed pretty sure about what she was doing then but she was also smelling something and all the announcers seemed to do then was make guesses.
The glucose tablets are not what the OP was asking about. She chewed those. There was something else though that she popped and sniffed like amyl nitrate. I don’t think it was smelling salts because what’s the point, and it looked like a capsule. All the smelling salts I’ve ever seen are in tiny little bags, more like salt packet from a restaurant.