esports
G2 Esports won the first massive European VALORANT tournament without dropping a map. Star signing ardiis reveals just how they managed it.
G2 Esports was the first major European esports organisation to sign a VALORANT roster and the move is already paying off, as they managed to win the Vitality European Open this past weekend. With a 256-team open bracket that featured fierce competition from the best Europe had to offer, it was quite a task. But G2 managed to make it through the final stage of the competition without dropping a single match, going 6-0 in the main event to secure the win.
The latest addition to the G2 VALORANT roster, Latvian gamer Ardis ‘ardiis’ Svarenieks, was one of the star performers at the tournament. Despite only joining the squad a few days beforehand he gelled remarkably well with the team. Now, thanks to his previous performances with the fish123 team, he is undefeated in VALORANT tournament finals and in an interview with Red Bull revealed how he and the G2 team managed to up his tournament win total further this past weekend.
First off congrats on winning the Vitality tournament. How does it feel to win the first real big team tournament in Europe?
Thank you. It feels good but I'm starting to become used to winning, I haven't lost a single BO3 [best of three] in VALORANT or in the VALORANT Beta and with this win, it becomes my ninth straight final win. I'm just happy we could also get off to a winning start with G2 and hope for many more wins from this crazy good lineup.
Heading into the event were you confident you would win or did you expect it to be closer than it was?
I thought we would be favourites in any matchup knowing how much skill we individually have. Problems started to occur after we started the BO5 [bets of five] final series around 1am where I questioned if we would all be there mentally, but looking back, we just had a bit more energy than Prodigy which gave us the edge.
I love going into games as a favourite since it makes me play better
Does going in as the favorite to win put extra pressure on you, or is that something you like?
I love going into games as a favourite since it makes me play better, I feel. It’s true that some people don't thrive off it like I do.
David ‘davidp’ Prins played really well across the weekend. Could we expect to see him in G2 colors officially anytime soon?
DavidP is probably one the most gifted free agents out there right now but currently we are trialing multiple people to ensure that we select the correct player for us. I think there's a few solid options but davidp is 100 percent near the top of the shortlist we have.
How have you managed to get so good at VALORANT so quickly?
I just made sure I played a lot of the game and tried to adapt as quickly as I can. Luckily I adapted to the team aspect of the game very quickly, since I joined fish123 on day one of the beta coming out. Winning nearly every event in the beta made me understand the meta and let me experience different situations which helped me develop as a player. At this point in time we are favourites for every event we enter so I learned to adapt to the pressure of the events as well as many other things.
Talk us through the final. First off, what went wrong in map one?
We've kinda got a curse happening to us where we somehow don't perform in the first map of a BO3. We aren't actually sure what causes it but we always start off slow, I think this is something we'll try to focus on more in the future to ensure we have clean wins.
What, if anything, did you change after that first map loss and did it work as you expected?
Like I said, we all knew after we lost the map that this is starting to become a kind of odd recurrence for us, but I don't think anyone had any doubts that we wouldn't win the series.
Map two was certainly impressive from you. Is Ascent a map you like and how are you so good on it?
I hate Ascent, I really don't like the map and I'm not actually sure how I performed so well. I said to my team in the pistol ‘if I get a 3k, I’m gonna pop off’. I ended up getting three kills and just carried the momentum on from there.
Map three was interesting, were you worried you might lose it when they started a comeback in the second half?
On Split we were really just having a lot of fun, running around and making plays happen. But when it switched over to defence, I felt our energy levels were dropping quickly so I'm just happy we managed to close out the game and not see another map. I feel like we gave them a few too many rounds on defence but ended up closing the game with some nice plays from the team.
What was the winning moment like for you, were you hyped or did you expect it to come?
I was honestly happy to keep my 100 percent win rate in finals and best of threes going but felt really drained since we had to play for almost 12 hours, which was a challenge itself. I'm used to winning in VALORANT at the moment so this just felt like another day for me. Hopefully, that doesn't change anytime soon!
