Sondre 'REAL' Svanevik is considered one of the most talented players of all time, though his list of accomplishments is arguably not strong enough to warrant him being hailed as one of the truly all time great players. During his career he was able to place 1st at CPL World Tour UK stop, 3rd at WEG S3, 4th at WEG Masters, 2nd at CPL Winter 2006, 3rd at SEC 2007 and 4th at WCG 2008.

In September of 2009 I became an in-depth career-spanning interview with REAL which began promisingly enough but sadly proved impossible to complete. The fragment of the interview which was completed follows a period of one year in REAL's career, from his joining team9 in April of 2005 to the WEG Masters event in 2006.

REAL talked about his early struggle to express his potential, his success at CPL UK and WEG S3, why he didn't to play with XeqtR in NoA and how good Jungle's wNv.gm were.

How good was the 15 year old REAL who joined team9 and went through those early struggles at Rixhack and ESWC? Did you consider yourself a top player already? What is difference between that player and the one today?

Back at that time I really felt that I was a really good player. I was being nagged constantly around those times by the Norwegian community, mostly about me not being legit, they were all 99% sure I was cheating. Funny story is that Jungelbobo thought I was cheating the first 2 months I was playing in team9, without me knowing until later. Rixhack was my first big event and I really had no clue of what I was going into, in terms of skill and LAN nerves. We finished around 8th or something if I remember correctly, I felt I played well enough, but definately had to step it up if I was gonna make it to the top.

In my mind ESWC was the biggest failure, we had a week bootcamp where we just ran over everyone. I myself came into the event with huge excpectations, not knowing that online practice didnt really mean anything. I had some problems with getting out my massive potential, which I knew I had. I don't think there is anything seperating myself from that time except experience, I played so much around 15-16 years of age, so I guess that's when I was at my peak skillwise. Of course I feel a lot stronger these days because of all the small things you pick up along the way.

On the surface it seems as though the change in team9's fortunes came with the addition, in August of 2005, of prb in place of raven to form a now well known lineup along with Jungelbobo, xione, oops and yourself. That lineup won the CPL World Tour UK stop less than two weeks later, beating teams like NiP, SK.swe and MiBR. Why do you think that team was able to suddenly leap to the next level like that?

What was a surprise for the international community really wasn't that big of one for ourselves, we knew we had a really strong lineup and that we had underperformed at the last event we attended. Of course getting a player like prb will boost any team, so that was the final piece in the puzzle for us. We had really good chemistry, and we were all so hungry for victory.

Following the CPL victory your team qualified for WEG Season 3 and was able to finish 3rd after defeating NiP. How was the experience of playing in South Korea and living with your team-mates for an extended period of time? Was it significant to face living legends like Potti and HeatoN?

WEG S3 was easily the best event I have ever attended, and I know everyone that was there feels the same. Being in Asia for two months just after turning 16 years old was something special, and not something a normal youth would experience, so I am forever grateful for the choices I made, even though I am somewhat behind in other respects such as education, but not that far away. I never really looked up to anyone in CS, but I obviously had a great amount of respect for all of them, mostly Heaton and Potti.

Many players never got the chance to how gauge how good that wNv.gm team (of Jungle, alex, sakula, tK and mikk) was since their reign only lasted around six months and was limited to events in Asia. You faced them in two Bo3 series, across WEG S3 and WEG Masters, so what is your take on how good they really were?

The wNv.gm thing is really confusing for me, and I think a lot of other top players feel the same as me. They are easily the best team I have played ever, they knew everything, never did a mistake and hit all their shots. It was kind of surreal seeing every top European team just getting destroyed by them. A lot of rumours started to arise, like if they were ghosting or doing something illegal. I don't really wanna come off as a whiner or anything, but what wNv did in China, they can't do that anywhere else on the planet, so you go ahead and draw your own conclusion about that.

At the end of 2005, after the success at CPL UK and WEG S3, team9 had established itself in all respects and at the time you even said interviews that you'd never want to leave, even for a bigger team. However, disaster struck and team9 suddenly had no funding which led to the side being torn in half at the very beginning of 2006, with you and Oops joining bsl's Catch Gamer while prb and xione joined XeqtR's NoA.

Shortly after the movie xione mentioned you personally had turned down a "better offer" in joining Catch Gamer instead of NoA. Is there anything to that or did you think Catch Gamer was going to be the team to elevate your career further? Looking back do you ever wonder what could have happened if the team9 lineup had been able to stay together?

We had really good chemistry in team9, after WEG 3 the offers were just flying around all four of us. Jungelbobo was looked on as a weaker player and we all kinda knew we had to part ways with him, which sucks because he was such a cool guy. For what it's worth he was a lot better than people think, he always put the four of us before him when it came to baiting etc. I have some funny memories from Jungelbobo in-game, when we were low on cash he dropped all of his guns to use and used himself as a shield jumping out of side hall on inferno not even looking at his own monitor cause he knew he was dead anyway, not easy to get a good score with that style, haha.

I feel I personally was caught in the middle between NoA and Catch Gamer. Oops knew juve9le well IRL and wanted to play with him in Catch, so he was going there no matter what. I really wanted us all to stay together but that wasn't gonna happen anyway, so I had to pick between a more skilled lineup (in my mind), but with XeqtR, and Catch, which I knew was gonna be a lot more fun to play in. I went for Catch Gamer and I don't regret it at all, we had a blast together and although I felt like I was the one carrying the team at all the events I didn't really care about it.

I think xione was right about what he said, but it didnt really matter. I didn't really wanna play with XeqtR because I thought he sucked balls, so there you have that. Ideally we would have stuck together and got a super-skilled fifth for Jungelbobo but there were no clean in-game leaders besides cArn/walle that were super good.

WEG Masters, in April of 2006, was an event which hinted at potential for that Catch Gamer lineup but also had its problems across the board. In the group stage your team was able to beat the reigning CPL champions SK.swe 16:0 on one map but was defeated by wNv.gm. Then in the playoffs you lose to coL and solo's project_kr. Aside from all of that you had an incident which forced you to visit the hospital. How would you describe that entire WEG Masters experience?

Versus wNv I could barely sit up straight because of food poisoning, can't believe we won dust2 versus them. We had no shot versus them if we were gonna play our standard game, so we just rushed them every round as CT and it worked. WEG masters was a really weird event, just when we had arrived after 20 hours travelling, the staff called us in for a meeting and told us that WEG was cancelled and that we would go home after a few days. After a couple of days they told us that it maybe would work out, apparently the city's government was just looking for a bribe to let it happen.

So after two weeks of idling and playing soccer with random Chinese people in the streets we got our practice computers. Everyone was so rusty and all the practice before the event was worthless, so everyone kinda had to start from scratch again. People were unhappy with the whole thing, especially SK were crying like hell about everything, probably why they got destroyed by everyone in that tournament.

(Photographs copyright of fragbite and GotFrag)