Salty Kick: Canada’s Team Jacobs sticks to pre-game smelling salts routine at Games

Canada's Brad Jacobs, Marc Kennedy, Brett Gallant, and Ben Hebert gesture during the men's curling round-robin session against the United States at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy on Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO — When the members of Team Brad Jacobs noticed a slight drop-off in performance during night games last fall, lead Ben Hebert had an idea.

“We needed something for some energy, like these daytime naps aren’t working,” he said Friday at the Winter Olympics. “So I’ve seen all the guys in the NFL and NHL use the smelling salts to wake them up.

“So my wife found us these beauties online and whoa man, do they get you good.”

It became part of the pre-game routine for the Calgary-based side of Jacobs, Hebert, Marc Kennedy and Brett Gallant in November. They won the Olympic Trials that month and are now representing Canada at the Milan Cortina Games.

“For us, it’s almost like a little team dynamic thing now,” Jacobs said. “Where we crack the salts, we all smell it together and we laugh, and we go through the burning pain.

“But it does wake you up, it makes your eyes water a little bit and gets you going.”

Canada improved to 2-0 in round-robin play at the Cortina Curling Olympic Stadium on Friday morning with a 6-3 win over American Daniel Casper.

Smelling salts were originally developed to revive people who had fainted, but for years have been marketed to athletes seeking energy boosts or added alertness.

“We had to get off the Red Bull at some point, we’re getting too old for that,” Jacobs said with a smile. “So we had come up with another plan.”

The use of smelling salts was a routine the NFL tried to curb somewhat last summer. The league said it would bar teams from directly giving out ammonia-based inhalants to players, but fell short of banning the product outright.

Citing a U.S. Food and Drug Administration warning from 2024, the league pointed to a lack of evidence supporting the product’s safety or efficacy, along with the potential risk of masking concussions.

The NHL, meanwhile, has said there were no plans to change league policy that allows teams to distribute smelling salts, but added it is being studied.

A Curling Canada spokesperson said its policy is to follow the WADA/Sporting Integrity Canada banned substances list.

While the small packets that snap open may be common in other sports, their use is rare in curling circles.

“(For) a morning game, we’ll crack one before we start the game and then we usually will crack one at the fifth-end break as well,” Jacobs said. “Hit two of those suckers during the game.”

With files from Canadian Press sports reporter Joshua Clipperton.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2026.

Gregory Strong, The Canadian Press