FlyQuest navigates 'insanely tough' BLAST Asia Risings final to book London spot

FlyQuest may have exited IEM Cologne early, but the Oceanic squad bounced back in a big way in Mongolia this week with a dominant win at BLAST Asia Risings.

The squad entered the Ulaanbaatar event as heavy favourites and proved more than worthy of the tag, defeating Alter Ego, Eruption, and The Huns without breaking much of a sweat.

That wasn't to say the event wasn't quite the ordeal, however. Wrapping up a quick semifinal at 12:30pm local on Sunday, FlyQuest returned for the 6pm grand final, but major tech issues and a FACEIT outage saw the match delayed for a whopping eight hours.

Manager Chris "GoMeZ" Orfanellis said on X/Twitter it was an "insanely tough qualifier" with the team rushing to Mongolia straight after their elimination at IEM Cologne.

"Coming in jet-lagged from EU, into an 8am shuttle into a semifinal best-of-3 at 10:30am. [The] grand final begins at after midnight the next day; I could barely stay awake watching in the crowd."

It's all worth it for the squad though, with the 2-0 (13-6, 13-10) victory over The Huns locking FlyQuest in for BLAST Open Fall in London later in August. Justin "jks" Savage (1.44 rating) has wasted no time in getting settled with the squad, topping the charts ahead of teammate Corey "nettik" Browne (1.42) and SemperFi sniper Alistair "aliStair" Johnson (1.38).

FlyQuest won't have long to practice their morin khuur with the event's trophy. The OCE squad heads straight back to Europe for the BLAST Bounty on Aug. 5 where they'll take on Turkish squad Aurora.

Fellow OCE reps SemperFi, Ground Zero go down in opening round

FlyQuest was one of three OCE teams flying the flag in Ulaanbaatar for BLAST Asia Risings with SemperFi and Ground Zero also vying for the ticket to London.

Unfortunately, neither could register a map win in the single-elimination bracket. SemperFi came within touching distance of a semifinal berth going down 2-0 (14-16, 10-13) to Eruption, with the Aussie-Latvian combo dropping Inferno despite two map points in regulation and a standout performance from aliStair.

Ground Zero—making a return to OCE CS for the first time since 2021—struggled against a superior Chinggis Warriors, managing just seven rounds in their series loss.

Both return home to Australia to resume domestic play, with the pair lining up against FLAT EARTH and Mindfreak respectively on Aug. 11 for the ESL Challenger League S50 Cup.