Tadej Pogačar is spearheading an era of performance unlike anything we've ever seen. Between his extraordinary power numbers and incredible climbing records, everyone wants to know — what's Tadej fueling with?
Everyone wants to know what's in Tadej Pogačar's bottle. Turns out the bigger secret was in his pocket.
For the last two to three seasons, riders in the World Tour peloton have quietly been passing around a silver gel with no branding, no label, nothing. Just a plain wrapper and 40g of carbs inside. We spent months tracking it down. Not because we needed another gel — because this one was different, and nobody would say why.
Here's what we found.
The Gel With No Name
Enervit makes Tadej's fuel. That part isn't a secret — UAE Team Emirates has run Enervit for years. What was a secret is that Pogačar doesn't race on what's sitting on the shelf at your local shop. He races on a custom formula the team built specifically for him, and until recently, you couldn't buy it at any price.
We finally got it. Enervit Tadej Secret Gel is the exact gel Pogačar uses to fuel three Tour de France wins and a World Championship. 40g of carbs per gel, built on a 2:1 maltodextrin-to-fructose ratio — meaning your gut absorbs it through two separate pathways at once instead of one, so you can take in more fuel per hour without your stomach shutting the whole operation down.
Tadej takes 2-3 of these per hour during a race. That's up to 120g of carbs an hour, which sounds aggressive until you remember he's racing at a wattage most of us will never see on a climb, let alone hold for four hours.
It comes in Mango — his original flavor — plus Lime, Cola, and Citrus Orange, all liquid-consistency so there's no thick paste sitting in your mouth at threshold. Rotate through them on long days and your palate won't revolt on you at hour three.
Then He Asked for More Sodium
Last year at the Tour, Tadej made a change mid-race. Same 40g carb formula, same 2:1 ratio — but he wanted more sodium. Enervit built it. Enervit Tadej Secret Sodium Gel adds 200mg of sodium per gel on top of the original formula, in a neutral flavor that doesn't fight with anything else in your kit.
The math is the part that matters here: at 3 gels an hour, that's 600mg of sodium from gels alone. Add his electrolyte drink on top, and Pogačar was reportedly hitting around 950mg of sodium per hour during hot stages — dialed in to match what he was actually losing through sweat, not a generic guess.
If you're a runner without a bottle in hand, this one's worth paying attention to. Instead of carrying separate salt tablets, your electrolytes are already built into the fuel you're taking anyway.
The Two-Gel System, Bundled
Once both gels existed, the obvious question was which one to take when. Enervit Tadej Gel Pack answers that by giving you three C2:1PRO Sodium Gels and three Mango Gels in one pack — the same two formulas UAE Team Emirates has access to, so you're not standing in a gas station parking lot trying to remember which gel has sodium in it.
The system is simple: reach for the Sodium Gel when you're sweating heavily or the day is hot and long. Reach for the Mango when your drink mix or electrolyte tablet already has sodium covered, so you're not stacking more than you need. Rotate between the two on rides over three hours to keep your gut and your taste buds both happy.
Don't Know Which One to Start With? Try All Three
If you'd rather not commit to a full box of one gel before you know what works for you, the UAE Team Emirates XRG Pack is the easiest way in. It's built around the same nutrition partnership behind everything above — Enervit is the brand quietly fueling Pogačar and the rest of UAE Team Emirates through every big result — and it bundles three different tools instead of making you choose one:
2x Enervit C2:1PRO Carbo Gel — 40g of carbs, same 2:1 ratio, no sodium. Your straightforward baseline gel.
2x Enervit Tadej Secret Sodium Gel — the 200mg-sodium formula Pogačar pushed the team to build mid-Tour.
2x Enervit Liquid Gel — 30g of carbs in a thinner, drinkable format in a resealable pouch, so you can sip half now and save the rest for later in the ride.
All three run the same 2:1 glucose-fructose ratio, so they stack cleanly no matter which combination you land on.
How to Actually Use These
Whichever version you're running, the framework doesn't change:
Take one gel every 20-30 minutes during efforts over 60 minutes.
Work up to 2-3 gels per hour depending on intensity and how your gut handles it.
Rotate flavors on anything past three hours to avoid palate fatigue.
Chase with water or Cfor faster absorption.
Start fueling early — don't wait until you're already running on empty.
Oh yeah, and finish your hardest days with Magic Cherry — something else we couldn't get our hands on for a while. Tadej and UAE do this religiously when racing the Tour.
None of this is complicated. It's just precise. That's the actual takeaway from all of it: Pogačar's advantage isn't a secret ingredient, it's that his team treats fueling with the same seriousness they treat everything else — dialed to the gram, adjusted mid-race when the data says to adjust, and never left to chance.
You don't need a World Tour budget to fuel the same way. You just need the same opportunity.
