Donk Surpasses Kjaerbye to Become the Youngest Major Winner in CS History

In our beloved FPS’s prolonged history, we have encountered many prodigies, but hardly anyone had the impact in their rookie year as Danil ‘donk‘ Kryshkovets did. Not only did he win the Shanghai Major dropping arguably the best individual performance by any rifler, but he accomplished this before turning 18.

Having started the year winning IEM Katowice, one of the CS‘s most prestigious events, donk announced himself to their tier-1 scene, while he did not manage many trophies since then, his performances terrified every team.

Through a topsy-turvy year, donk made it abundantly clear that his performance at IEM Katowice was no fluke. donk continued to impress and improve and finally peaked at the Perfect World Shanghai Major. Despite starting poorly, Team Spirit managed to crawl their way to the playoffs. It was in the playoffs that donk came into his own and crushed everyone who came his way.

Crushing Team Liquid in the Quarter-Finals, MOUZ in the Semi-Finals, and Spirit faced FaZe Clan in the first. Suffice it to say that FaZe put up quite the performance but it wasn’t enough to keep donk at bay who averaged a rating of 1.67.

donk was the difference maker for Team Spirit which earned him his MVP title and his young age of 17 made it even more impressive. He now holds the record for the youngest player to win the Major in the history of Counter-Strike, a record previously held by Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye.

Ironically, Kjaerbye, who won his major at the age of 18, was also the MVP. It was hard to imagine his record getting broken but 7 years from then donk has taken the title away from him with his stellar performance in Shanghai.