Dissecting the Infamous ‘Olofboost’

It is 2014. Fnatic has made the finals of 5 out of 7 S-Tier tournaments they have participated in, in the second half of the year. They have lost to Titan twice and lost in the Cologne Major Grand Finals to NiP once. Having won 4 finals, they are clearly the strongest team in the world. But come the last Major of the year on Fnatic’s own home turf, things have unexpectedly gone awry.

Prologue

Though they were the best and the most feared, they lost a Group Stage match to HellRaisers that would give them second place in the group. That’s where things get weird. Being number two, they did not get into the bracket they expected to get. 

Instead, they met LDLC in the Quarterfinals, the second-best team in the world. A potential Grand Finals was set to take place there already.

The Match

The French powerhouse started the game by winning the first map, Dust 2, 16-10. But in a statement fashion, fnatic crawled back into the game with a 16-8 win on Cache. The game, as expected between the two best teams in the world, went to Overpass – the deciding match.

And fnatic absolutely crumbled. An utterly dominant CT first half by LDLC meant fnatic picked up merely 3 rounds, having the score bulge in favour of LDLC 12-3 at halftime. They also picked up the pistol round of the second half to make it 13-3. There was absolutely no way out. Fnatic were staring at elimination with the darkest possible thousand-yard stare. 

And that is where the cold blow of historic madness hit and froze LDLC, quite literally. Fnatic had pulled out their secret weapon, their trump card. On the CT spawn/A site, olofmeister, with the help of his buddies, jumped all the way to the top with the boost of a lifetime. He balanced himself on a random pixel. His teammates left him there with a Scout, and to the utter bewilderment of LDLC, olofmeister had taken two heads off their bodies. NBK was the first one to fall victim to the most controversial play in the history of the game.

(You know it’s crazy when the caster has to reference a Led Zepplin song to explain a situation.)

And as the perplexed LDLC tried to find where the fatal bullets came from, fnatic wrote history on the darker pages of CS:GO. There was no going back. olofmeister could see a gigantic amount of the map through that boost and fnatic bulldozed their way to victory, overturning a 13-3 deficit into a 16-13 win. By the last round of play, LDLC had figured out where the lead rain was descending from and they built their own little three-man tower to kill olofmeister in a last-ditch attempt to get the round. But the Swede was 2 steps ahead and predicted their boost, killing Happy and shattering the hopes and dreams of the French team.

Aftermath

The moment the match ended, fnatic were overloaded with criticism and insults on an unprecedented scale. Be it fans, casters, or pros, everyone was blinded by what they had just seen; be it with rage or with awe. fnatic’s coach, Devilwalk, only worsened things up with his not-so-gentle interview, where he revealed that fnatic held on to the secret for 2 months before playing it in the QF Major. All for nothing, as time would dictate.

The interviewer simply couldn’t help passively insult a face wearing a grin that seemed eternal. But it was not, for LDLC filed a complaint later that night about the illegal boost. It did not take long before Dreamhack complied and a rematch of the second half was ordered. But a mild plot twist happened when fnatic filed a complaint as well. It turned out that LDLC had used an illegal pixel-walking boost as well, but to a much, much lesser extent and result. 

The final verdict saw the whole map being replayed. But that day never came, for fnatic forfeited the map without stating a reason. 

Fnatic’s wrongdoings were overturned and LDLC, clearly the better team on the night as agreed by Devilwalk himself, had advanced to the semi-finals. LDLC went on to win the Major. 

Though fnatic would close out the year with another LAN win, the olofboost remained a thorn in their side. They had homed quite a few problems over the year. olofmeister and fnatic were being attacked for the boost. flusha was constantly facing cheating allegations. JW was being demonized for his behavior after beating NiP in Bucharest in 2013. But to everyone’s surprise, they were able to brush away these problems and get to a level that remains barely matched, even to this very day. 

They won the next two Majors of 2015 consecutively, beating LDLC, now EnVyUs, in the Grand Finals of the second Major. EnVyUs got their revenge in the last Major of 2015, the year that would effectively mark the end of fnatic. EnVyUs banned Overpass on both occasions.

fnatic could have won the Dreamhack ‘14 match had they not discovered the boost. The CT side strat that OP definitely made them complacent on the T side and had they not known about the boost, the match could have been genuinely one to enjoy in fair play. 

In the end, life went on for both teams. Both of them won Majors again in 2015, fnatic trumping EnVyUs in the count. Also, both teams died out by the end of 2015. But history was undeniably and unchangeably written and is left to us lower mortals to reminisce and rage about until the end of time.