A pesky stomach bug continues to plague players at Valorant Champions 2022.
OpTic Gaming’s Austin “crashies” Roberts was battling food poisoning during their match against Team Liquid, while in-game leader Pujan “FNS” Mehta also fell ill a couple of days ago.
In a tweet after their 2-1 victory over Liquid, Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker praised his teammate for powering through despite feeling ill.
“Shout out to crashies for powering through some food poisoning today,” he said. “Was throwing up in between matches. Crazy teammate and player.”
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Crashies’ performance showed no hint that he was ill
FNS similarly lauded the 24-year-old for playing as well as he did in a post-match press conference.
Crashies’ performance gave no hint that he wasn’t feeling his best. He finished the series with a 41/39/20 KDA, pushing Liquid to the brink in several rounds where he almost clutched against multiple opponents.
“He’s a trooper. I had the same thing he had two days ago and it was rough,” said FNS. “I respect him a lot for putting on the performance that he did. He was still communicating really well, destroying players, and controlling rounds — just like he normally does.”
“But the rest of us were aware of his condition, so we knew we had to step up.”
Yay certainly rose to the occasion, rounding out the series with an eye-watering 69/40/10 KDA and 309 Average Combat Score (ACS) on Chamber. The OpTic star was unstoppable on Ascent, dropping 30 kills on the map alone.
The Green Wall have not had the best of luck when it comes to player health during tournaments. At Valorant Champions last year, Victor “Victor” Wong came down with COVID-19, while both FNS and crashies tested positive just before the upper bracket final of the VCT NA Stage 2 Challengers playoffs in June.
Fortunately, crashies will have time to recover before their next match. OpTic play their next game on September 13 at 1:00 a.m. GMT+8 | September 12, 10:00 a.m. PT | September 12, 5:00 p.m. GMT. The match will be broadcast live on the official Valorant Twitch and YouTube channels.
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