apEX: "For me, it's always been hard to get recognition from people"

The French captain is happy to finally receive some community plaudits.

An entry fragger in his early days, Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire's transition to one of the elite IGLs is a story for the ages. The 30-year-old took on the role in Vitality and won a plethora of accolades during his tenure at the helm of the project.

His team won the BLAST.tv Paris Major during 2023 and was named as HLTV's Team of the Year, while apEX took home the IGL of the Year award. Despite this, the French captain remains vigilant about dropping off ahead of the new season.

After he and his team demolished OG in the opening round of the BLAST Spring Groups, apEX sat down with HLTV to discuss his recent awards, Vitality's expectations for 2024, and his increased fragging output.

---

You've just played your first official this year, a 13-0 victory. That must feel good, right?

I think it's the first time in my life I won something 13-0 or 16-0, which is pretty satisfying, even more so when it's the start of a new year. We played well, a bit shaky on the CT side on Inferno at some point, but it's normal when you have a big advantage, you get too much in your head, I would say. A good day.

You now move to the upper bracket final where you might face off against Falcons. How will that feel for you? Do you want to face them or would you rather avoid them?

People ask me who I want to face and I don't really care if we have to play Falcons. It will be a special game for us against the old coach, the old performance coach, and the old player in Magisk. Of course, it's going to be something for us that we want to win, but we're ready for everyone right now. We're not focusing on the others, we're just focusing on the team. We did so well at the end of last year and for us, it's so important that we try to do exactly the same this year and create something nice.

You said you ended last year very well. You're now the number-one team in the world. So do you expect to keep that going and win titles?

It's never that easy. We saw after the winter break, after a new year, a lot of teams struggling after dominating the year. Of course, 2023 has been a Vitality year, but you never know. FaZe had struggled at the beginning of 2023, and NAVI as well because of the war, but it's always been like that. Only Astralis I think have made it to the next year. So it's going to be important just to focus on ourselves. We don't expect to win the big tournaments, of course, we are favorites, but in our heads, we are just trying to rebuild what worked for us last year and give our best to make it happen.

I want to ask you as the IGL of the team, Vitality went through the addition of flameZ and addition of mezii, but you still stayed on top all the time. What do you think helps you do that?

I think the first thing that comes to my mind is that we have a strong core that plays really well, me as IGL, ZywOo, and Spinx. I have less firepower and the two guys with a lot of firepower. So I think it's been easier to get any player into the team [because of that], we always try to put them in the best conditions. One guy who's been pretty good at integrating players is also karrigan, he has always been like a good IGL integrating stand-ins, he's the king of the stand-ins.

It's about playing your game, but most likely trying to help the guys integrate as fast as possible, to make them comfortable, and do their moves. And if they get just a bit of confidence, then they can roll fast. So for us, it's a combination of these things.

You said in the core of you, Spinx and ZywOo, that those two have more firepower, and you don't. But since CS2 came out, you've been putting up some really good numbers. Do you feel individually better in this game?

For now, yeah, I tried to play differently. I've been missing a lot of shots in CS:GO by just spraying and not really focusing on myself. Now I'm trying to have a different playstyle, not too NiKo-ish, but trying to take my time in duels and getting better at that. I've been in the best shape for quite some time, even though it's not the most important thing that I play well. But if I do, it adds to the team even more because my goal is to put my four players at the top. If they are, we're going to win titles because it's like that in CS. With the players I have, if they perform, the other team will be scared for sure.

You also had a coach change recently with XTQZZZ returning to the team. So how has it been working with him again?

The beginning was really weird, to be honest. We changed a lot in two years, and we didn't expect to lose zonic, so it took a bit of time to make things happen. We had a bootcamp and everything, but I would say that XQTZZZ is a LAN coach and not a practice coach. He's pretty quiet in the preparation but really vocal on LAN. It was weird at the beginning, but when we came back to the LAN in Copenhagen, I felt him again and felt our connection was still there.

We were still aligned on a lot of things and it just feels good. I think I repeat it a lot lately, but he's a fantastic coach. He and zonic are the best of the best for me, and I just hope he's going to get recognized as the best by winning some big tournaments. It's also part of my goal this year to win the big ones for him because he deserves to have big trophies as a coach, he's a really good coach.

Talking about this season, you skipped the RMR qualifiers, I'm sure you're happy about that. So did this help you to enter the season a bit more rested and work on the things that you need to work on?

Yes. I think that it was the first time we had a two or three-week break in a couple of years, which was amazing, being with family and having fun. I told my guys that it was the best thing that could happen. We finished the year with two wins, we had a longer break, and we can focus on the LANs we have. It's just a pleasure to be able to do it.

We have to use that to keep trying to win tournaments and be the best we can be. For me, you never know who is going to be the best on the day. It's just about reaching those semis all the time and trying to be consistent. And then, of course, if we are the best on that day, we might win tournaments because as I said, we have really good players. So the focus is on that for now.

I know you spoke about it at the Award Show, but Vitality has been named Team of the Year. You have been named the IGL of the Year. How does it feel to receive such recognition for your efforts?

I had three big goals coming up to 2023. The first one was to win the Paris Major because it was a dream for us, and we accomplished that, it was the biggest goal. I tried everything I could, even though it's 0.01%, to help ZywOo to be back in the number-one spot because this guy is too talented to not be first, even though s1mple is also the GOAT of CS. The other goals were to be the best IGL of the year as well as the best team.

For me, it's always been hard to get recognition from people. I felt it's always been, 'you have ZywOo, you can perform' or whatever, and never really what I bring to the players. It's always about the negativity because of my emotions. So it felt good to be awarded for something myself, something I did for four years. And I was just super happy to get that, it meant a lot because in 2014 and 2015, I was one of the best entry fraggers in the world, and transitioning to another role and being the best is something not many people will do. So I'm happy about that and I'm going to try my best.