Former VALORANT Pro Wins Gold Medal At Paralympics
Rowan "magnetbrain" Crothers, a former VALORANT professional, has won gold at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics.
Often, the saying goes that gamers need to 'touch grass' every once in a while to avoid being the stereotype depicted in the famous South Park episode. However, one gamer has gone above and beyond in getting away from their gaming chair, and has become a Paralympic gold medallist in Swimming.
Crothers, an Australian swimmer with cerebral palsy, swapped Jett's blades for the diving board, and made the biggest splash imaginable.
After becoming a professional VALORANT player in the OCE region, upon the title's first esports series in 2020, Crothers decided to take a break following a 5th-8th placement at the LetsPlay.Live Challengers event. Instead, he chose to dive into the deep end, and train for the Paralympics.
As of August 26, Crothers became a Paralympic champion, taking home gold in the men's 50m freestyle.
The gamer-stroke-swimmer, ended his race just 0.005 seconds off the World Record time, and erupted into a heart-warming display of emotion. Speaking to 7Sport, Crothers admitted he originally hated swimming, but persisted as it helped with the cerebral palsy, before pushing himself to become the best in the business.
He also took home a silver medal in the 100m freestyle and joked that the silver medal complimented his tone better than the gold. A second gold medal was picked up on August 30, as Team Australia continued their in-water dominance by winning the 4x100m freestyle, in which Crothers, William Martin, Matthew Levy, and Ben Popham set a new World Record.
Known as "magnetbrain" in the VALORANT community, he was soon commended on his achievements by Riot Games themselves, as the official game account congratulated him.
Despite going down in the Paralympic history books, magnetbrain also joked that his "gamer status" proved influential on coping with a lack of sleep at the Tokyo Games, presumably from the nerves of competing.
He's also hinted at jumping back onto VALORANT in the near future - after the Paralympics has wrapped up.