Vitality advance to BLAST World Final upper final over G2

The French team continue to flourish in their last ride together as they send G2 to the lower bracket.

Vitality have advanced to the upper bracket final at the BLAST Premier World Final after prevailing in a two-map series over G2, securing wins on Nuke and Mirage to send the international mixture down to the lower bracket, where they'll face the incredibly difficult task of overcoming Natus Vincere on Friday at 16:30 .

The Frenchmen, meanwhile, have secured themselves a top four finish at the very minimum in this lineup's final event together, and they'll look to make their third consecutive grand final appearance as they go up against Gambit in the upper bracket final on Saturday at 16:30 .

It was Vitality's pick of Nuke that kicked things off, and Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire's side were in good form as it got underway. A pistol win courtesy of a triple kill and 1vs2 clutch from Jayson "⁠Kyojin⁠" Nguyen Van led into a spree of four rounds for the French side, but their streak was put to a halt shortly after as Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač shut down yard presence, round after round.

Just two more rounds went the way of Vitality in the half, but once the sides swapped over, they were quickly back to their winning ways. Constant aggression from apEX and multi-kill rounds from Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut were key in leading a dominant CT side effort from the Frenchmen, who conceded just one more round en route to a 16-10 finish to take their map pick in firm fashion.

A forcebuy from G2 helped them to recover from a pistol round loss as Mirage got underway, and it seemed the tides had turned against Vitality as NiKo and company won seven in a row to establish a strong lead. It was once again ZywOo who stepped up to the plate to put a halt to the streak, finding a handful of triple kill rounds as Vitality battled back into the half, with G2 still leading by three at halftime.

Much like on Nuke, the second half spiraled out of control for G2 as the entirety of Vitality came alive. An initial trading of blows saw G2 up 12-9 before the French side began to batter the CT defenses, with ZywOo in particular coming alive in the closing moments of the map to help his team take things over the line, 16-13.