Bringing in two new players to their lineup, Triumph has stunned Cloud9 in their Road to Rio North America Opener by winning the three map series 2-1. (16-11 on Veritgo, 9-16 on Inferno [Lost] and 16-14 on Train).
Triumph opened Veritgo with a top-notch pistol round on the CT side, which saw Gabe “Spongey” Greiner pick up a swift quad kill, with the North American side led by Alan “Shakezullah” Hardeman squad wasting no time in taking an unassailable lead of 5-1. Cloud9 did respond by winning a plethora of rounds with Ian “motm” Hardy setting up a stellar performance helping them switch sides with the scoreline of 6-9 in favor of Triumph. But upon the switch, the South African-American side deflated moving forward on their defense as Triumph, led by an unstoppable Michael “Grim” Wince who came out to be the spearhead for Triumph with a KD of 25k-15D sealed the map win for his team combining his efforts along with Rahul “Curry” Nemani.
Cloud9 did regain their lost momentum as Inferno got underway , dominating for much of the first half as they won six of the first seven rounds. A late resurgence allowed Triumph to bring themselves within four rounds of their opposition at halftime with the score line of 4-11 favoring Cloud9. On switch, with a pistol round victory, Triumph’s troops got into a bid to reconstruct their dominance but suffered several hiccups. Cloud9 did not concede the lead though, quickly regaining their footing through relentless aggressive plays from Triumph and with Josh “oSee” Ohm Awping, it totally proved to be the cherry on top of the cake as Cloud clinched the map with the score of 16-9.
After squaring the series 1-1, with Cloud9 in a bid to seal the series in their favor, Johnny ‘JT’ Theodosiou and his troops went on to take an amusing 3-0 lead over their NA counterparts but were quickly halted by the combined forces of Curry and Paytyn “Junior” Johnson who secured a trio of rounds. With the rhythm still in the camp of Cloud9, they added more 3 rounds to the board couldn’t close the half on a good note as Shakezullah and his men closed their defense with a score of 9-6 in the first half. Though conceding the pistol round on their defense, Cloud9 seemed to have come back to life as they surprisingly took a 13-11 lead but it turned out to be one of their worst nightmares where Triumph penetrated through the defense of Cloud9 to win their eco round. Running low on cash, jT and his men were forced to observe a double eco round which saw them crash 14-16 to a 6-day old lineup.
