Well it's probably not all that sweet if you have just completed a gruelling race during a hot summer afternoon! But what if there really was a smell that could help propel you to the top of the medal podium?

Believe it or not, researchers think they may have found a smell that could give you the advantage over your rivals. They asked 40 athletes (20 male, 20 female) competing in running-based events to perform four tests:

• grip strength;
• 400m-time trial;
• push-ups to exhaustion;
• 20 basketball free throw shots.

The subjects performed these tests with adhesive strips under their nose which were either odour-free or infused with two drops of peppermint oil. The startling result was that the athletes with the peppermint strips performed more press-ups, ran faster and demonstrated greater grip strength than the 'controls', although there was however no real difference in shooting ability between the two groups.

How does it all work?

No one is entirely sure, but the research team suggest that mood and motivation are closely linked. Previous studies have demonstrated that pleasant odours like peppermint improve people's mood. (Think how good you feel when you walk into a supermarket and catch a whiff of freshly baked bread.) Such an improvement in mood may cause athletes to make more effort, which would help them perform better than someone in a bad mood.

Why then did the peppermint-sniffers fail to improve their basketball shooting? There's no real explanation but it was probably because success in this test is more indicative of skill than of effort. Obviously more research is needed, but maybe one day we'll see attempts to infuse the popular nasal dilator worn by many top athletes with peppermint to spur them even harder to victory!

Nick Grantham