Natus Vincere won the BLAST Premier Spring Final over Vitality on Sunday, June 19. It was their first tournament without former in-game leader Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhaylov, who was dropped due to “high reputation risks” at the end of May and replaced by Ukrainian rifler Viktor “sdy” Orudzhev
Sdy joined NAVI on loan from MAD Lions, a European organization that transfer-listed its whole CS:GO roster in April, and did well against tier-one teams such as FaZe Clan and Vitality at the Spring Final, despite having little to no time to practice ahead of the tournament. The Ukrainian had a lower rating than his teammates in almost all matches, but he played an important role throughout the event with his impactful plays such as his multi-kill against Vitality in the grand finals.
Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, the superstar of NAVI and MVP of the Spring Final, made it clear that he wants to keep playing with sdy moving forward.
“I hope [sdy] will play in IEM Cologne, I think he played really great,” s1mple said in an interview with HLTV yesterday, after beating Vitality. “He had a lot of key rounds against OG and against Vitality today, a lot of multi-kills. He is a really calm guy and he is ready to learn, he knows how to listen to other people.”
NAVI said back when sdy was announced as a stand-in for the Spring Final that he could continue on the team depending on his performance throughout the $425,000 event. It’s hard to imagine that the organization will not keep him for upcoming tournaments after the team’s success this past weekend.
IEM Cologne kicks off on July 5.
