Team Spirit Stuns The World To Win $18million Prize
Team Spirit has cemented their name into the esports history books, by winning the most lucrative prize ever, taking home $18million from the Dota 2 The International 10.
The Russian outfit stunned the Dota 2 world having scraped through to the competition in a last-chance Eastern European Qualifier, defying all odds to overcome some of the best teams in the world to take home a huge slice of the richest pie in esports history.
The Team Spirit Dota 2 roster of Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk, Alexander "TORONTOTOKYO" Khertek, Magomed "Collapse" Khalilov, Miroslaw "Mira" Kolpakov, and Yaroslav "Miposhka" Naidenov have been crowned TI10 champions, collecting $18,208,300 (approximately $3.6million each).
In their incredible road to victory, Team Spirit was dumped into the lower bracket, after narrowly making the top four in the Group Stage. As one of the lowest-seeded teams in the event, the EMEA titans made a run that people only dream of, beating Fnatic, defending back-to-back champions OG, Virtus.pro, Invictus Gaming, Team Secret, and bookies' favourite PSG.LGD in the Grand-Final.
A team with no TI experience together, many were expecting Team Spirit's run to simply fade away, especially with their less-than favourable living conditions proving quite an obstacle in the Group Stages.
However, a fairytale of resilience, stamina, and endurance was only epitomised in their Grand Final match-up versus hot favourites PSG.LGD. The Chinese opposition had swept through to the final by losing just two maps (winning 21) and looked invincible. Team Spirit had no intentions of rolling over though and dealt PSG.LGD their first consecutive map losses of the event, a feat that nobody expected.
Their perseverance was put to the test though, having played an extortionate amount of data 2 gameplay in their miracle run, and PSG's undeniable talent began to run over the tiring Team Spirit, bringing back the game to level pegging.
Going into the decisive match, Team Spirit harnessed their namesake to find a second wind, and top their run-off with a very expensive cherry on the cake.
$18,000,000 later, and Team Spirit go down in history as the team to get their hands on the biggest prize in esports history. A true story of rags to riches.
