No other team at the IEM Rio CS:GO Major has been as resilient as Cloud9, who at one point were down 0-2 in the Challengers Stage, but have now rallied back in four different series in which they trailed to reach the 2-0 pool of Legends Stage.
Their most recent triumph comes against their greatest foe yet, one of the top contenders in NAVI. C9 was trailing 13-7, having lost the first five rounds of the second half. But like they’ve done all tournament, they rallied on their CT side, winning nine of the last 10 rounds thanks to a dominant defensive side. They were led by 20 second half kills from Ax1Le, who finished Mirage with a total of 33.
Cloud9’s run at IEM Rio started as painfully as possible, with back-to-back overtime losses to Fnatic and Grayhound that put their Major run on life support. But C9 refused to let someone else pull the plug on them.
C9 has trailed 11-15 and 6-15 to Imperial, 4-12 to GamerLegion in map one, 4-13 to FaZe, and 7-13 to NAVI, and has come back to win all five of those maps, needing overtime to win both maps against Imperial. C9 even trailed 5-14 to Fnatic before fighting back to force OT, despite eventually losing that map.
It’s a fitting set of results from the organization that’s sole Major trophy comes from one of the most historic comebacks in CS:GO history, when C9’s NA roster came back from a 15-11 deficit on Inferno in the grand finals of the ELEAGUE Boston Major against FaZe.
Now in the 2-0 pool, and with wins over both FaZe and NAVI under their belts, a second Major trophy for Cloud9 is very much a possibility.
