EGNA, Italy – Aleksa Rakic of Burnaby, B.C., took fifth spot in the men’s competition on Saturday while ice dancers Sandrine Gauthier of St-Constant, Que., and Quentin Thieren of Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Que., were also fifth at the seventh stop on the ISU Junior Grand Prix figure skating circuit.

In men’s competition, Lucas Broussard of the U.S. earned his second victory this season with 211.14 points. He edged Japan’s Shunsuke Nakamura second at 211.01 while his compatriot Takeru Amine Kataise was third at 201.35.

Rakic, 18, improved on his seventh place at the JGP stop in Czechia last month scoring 197.56. He posted a personal best international score for his short program on Thursday with 71.50.

Canada had two entries in ice dancing with Gauthier and Thieren totalling 144.05 and Marianne Hubert of Trois-Rivieres, Que., and William Odson of Calgary placing 10^th with 130.70.

Katerina Mrazkova and Daniel Mrazek of Czechia won the gold with 173.00. Hannah Lim and Ye Quan of South Korea were second at 158.25 and Leah Neset and Artem Markelov of the U.S. third at 156.36.

Gauthier and Thieren won the silver medal last month at the Junior Grand Prix stop in Riga and were hoping to reach the podium again to qualify for the Grand Prix Final in December.

‘’There are things we need to work on but for the fitness, performance and interpretation we saw an improvement on our last showing,’’ said Gauthier. ‘’It’s our first year on the circuit so the Final wasn’t our goal but it would have been a bonus to go.’’

Hana Yoshida of Japan also won her second Junior Grand Prix event placing first in women’s competition. Rose Théroux of Ste-Victoire-de-Sorel, Que., was 14th out of 44 entries.

Full results: http://www.isuresults.com/results/season2223/jgpita2022/