HEROIC bench gr1ks; loan Alkaren from Spirit

Alkaren's loan comes with an option to make the move permanent.

HEROIC has announced that Gleb "⁠gr1ks⁠" Gazin has been moved to the bench less than a month after making his debut, and in his place will come Alimzhan "⁠Alkaren⁠" Bitimbai on loan from Spirit Academy.

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HEROIC sign gr1ks

The precipitous change comes after only two events, FISSURE Playground 1 and IEM Cologne. HEROIC were eliminated early at the first event after losses to BIG and BetBoom, but had a successful first stage at IEM Cologne, beating MIBR and Virtus.pro to make it to the second stage, where they once again were out after two straight losses.

gr1ks struggled, as did all of HEROIC, at FPG and in IEM Cologne's second stage, with 0.95 and 0.79 ratings, respectively, but showed potential with a 1.19 in the Stage 1 campaign in Germany.

"When the spring season wrapped up and summer rolled in, we made changes to our starting lineup and coaching staff. That marked the beginning of a new roster at HEROIC," the organization's statement reads.

"Our management made a number of moves to get the team into the right spot. Now, we have to accept that not all the pieces we put together have fit as well as we hoped, and we take full responsibility for that. That's why we’ve decided to make a change early in the season."

Spirit Academy's AWPer, Alkaren, will take over, although he won't be able to play BLAST Bounty due to roster lock rules, and HEROIC will instead play with academy AWPer Rasmus "⁠Scr0b⁠" Poulsen as a stand-in until the Kazakh AWPer can take over.

Alkaren, who has been playing in lower tiers of European competition with a 1.10 rating since joining Spirit Academy in May 2024 and won LanDaLan 2025 and LanDaLan 2, will join on loan with an option for HEROIC to make the move permanent. He will make his debut at the Esports World Cup.

HEROIC are now:

Linus "⁠LNZ⁠" Holtäng
Andrey "⁠tN1R⁠" Tatarinovich
Linus "⁠nilo⁠" Bergman
Simon "⁠yxngstxr⁠" Boije
Alimzhan "⁠Alkaren⁠" Bitimbai (loan)

Tobias "⁠TOBIZ⁠" Theo (coach)

Yasin "⁠xfl0ud⁠" Koç (bench)
Gleb "⁠gr1ks⁠" Gazin (bench)