Why GamerLegion look beyond the now with Kursy

The European team knew that there was an element of risk in signing someone with so little experience. They still believe they made the right move.

As Jeremy "⁠Kursy⁠" Gast sits down with me in the lobby of the player hotel in Belgrade halfway through FISSURE Playground to discuss his sudden rise into tier-one Counter-Strike, he looks a little out of his element.

It's all still very new to him. Only a few weeks ago, hardly anyone even knew about him, besides French players or die-hard tier-3 enthusiasts. And now here he is, on a top-15 team in the world, about to play at IEM Cologne, one of the most prestigious tournaments in esports.

I tell Kursy that he can answer my questions in French if he feels more comfortable, yet he insists he wants to do it in English. Interviews like this will become more of a regular occurrence, after all.

Read more

GamerLegion sign Kursy

It has been days since GamerLegion came out on top of their group by beating Wildcard and SAW. Kursy averaged a 1.13 rating in those matches — not particularly impressive but nothing to scoff at either, especially considering this is his first time playing at this level.

He was brought in to replace Henrich "⁠sl3nd⁠" Hevesi, who had been moved to the bench at the end of the season. The AWP position has never been GamerLegion's strength: Frederik "⁠acoR⁠" Gyldstrand was serviceable but not great, and sl3nd struggled to hold his own against top-20 opposition.

With only a couple of French LANs on his résumé, Kursy joined GamerLegion with almost no time to acclimate to this level of competition and with pressure surrounding the team after a failed qualifying attempt for the Austin Major. He's being thrown into the deep end, but he's taking everything in stride.

"I don't think I was nervous," he tells HLTV about his debut. "I was more excited to play. It was my first official with them, so I wanted to have a good start. I think we started well.

"It was a bit of pressure for everyone, I think, because we hadn't played an official in a long time. We tried our best, and we want to show more. We will show more."

Kursy began playing Counter-Strike at the end of 2017. That year, he attended his first LAN, but shortly afterward, he took a break from competition for approximately two years. During that period, he was playing FACEIT "for chilling," but his main focus was to lose some weight.

In April 2021, he joined WonderKids, a team led by Boris "⁠flex0r⁠" Latry, a French veteran who had notably played for redLine and 3DMAX in CS:Source. Between 2022 and 2025, he mostly featured for GenOne, the organization founded by streamer Sebastien "⁠KRL⁠" Perez, where he earned a modest salary. There was also a brief stint with Gucci Academy and even a stand-in appearance for Falcons.

As the 2025 summer break started, Kursy suddenly found himself in hot demand. "I had a lot of offers in the space of two weeks," he reveals. "It was a bit stressful because I had a lot of choice." He doesn't know exactly what caused this surge of interest, though he suspects that teams had started paying attention to his games, which were being covered by HLTV more frequently.

Everything changed when GamerLegion came into the picture. Kursy immediately put all the other offers to the side.

"You can't really refuse a team like this," he says. "They are young, like me. Everyone is going to the gym, like me. When I was watching them, I felt like we could be friends. That's something important."

It is not often that players step into tier-one Counter-Strike at the age of 23 without much prior experience. Many in his position probably would have given up hope on turning professional, but Kursy insists that he always trusted himself.

"I knew I could do it," he says. "I was just waiting for my time. I think that if you try your best every time and if you perform well, a chance might come, and you have to grab it."

flex0r was among those who congratulated Kursy on joining GamerLegion. "Proud of you!" he wrote on X. "After all this time of not giving up, you have finally got the offer you deserve. Show them now!"

Playing for GamerLegion has been an incredible learning experience for Kursy. "There are a lot of things that I had never thought about before," he admits. He found it hard to express himself during his first week on the team, but he is getting more comfortable communicating in English each day.

GamerLegion went on to lose to BetBoom in the quarter-finals after an off-colour performance. Oldřich "⁠PR⁠" Nový, who had finished the group stage with a 1.43 rating, was far below his standard, with head coach Ashley "⁠ash⁠" Battye revealing after the match that the Czech star had spent the entire day sick. It was also a night to forget for Kursy, who mustered only eight AWP kills as he posted a series-low 0.72 rating.

Read more

ash: "We've not really shown our A-game"

It was to be expected that Kursy would struggle in his first stage match, but it is clear that GamerLegion are looking beyond the now. "He has that thing," Erik "⁠ztr⁠" Gustafsson told eSports Bulgaria when discussing the new sniper. "You can really see the potential, and I think his skill ceiling is really, really high."

When comparing Kursy and sl3nd, ztr said the Frenchman is "more like ZywOo, more of an aggressive type of player," while the Hungarian "could be compared, playstyle-wise, to sh1ro."

Questioned after the quarter-final loss whether he still thinks Kursy is the right AWPer for the team, ash said: "A hundred percent."

"He's never really played in any sort of system or had full rules or anything like this," ash explained. "He always played in a team that had a lot of voices and moves, but as far as reactions and all these things, it's just coming into a brand new team, especially one like ours, and it's hard because we have so much.

"I think his brain has been a little bit fried, and he's gone from a player who was all about his skill level to being one trying to fit in maybe a little bit too much. Once he gets there and can understand what he's doing without looking at his notes, asking someone all the time, it will be easier to play his game.

"Right now, I think he's a little bit overwhelmed, plus playing on stage is something he had never done before. I have absolutely no doubts whatsoever."

Kursy admits he still has "a lot to improve."

"I know I'm far away from my level," he says. "Because it's a new team, I have a lot of notes on every map about what I have to do.

"It's getting better, but at the start, I was reading my notes every time, and I was not focused on my performance. I'm more focused on how the team can perform with me. In some weeks, once I've had all the theories in my mind, I will be better because I will only focus on myself."

It has been a wild few months for Kursy, who has been plucked out of tier-3 obscurity to play on some of the biggest stages with almost no time to prepare or process.

Still, he shoots down the notion that he's living a dream.

"Of course it's a good opportunity," he says. "But I don't want to think that it's a dream because if you think that way, you may not go higher, you know?

"This is what I want for me. I want this to be my standard."