Barely a month after he dazzled the crowd at the Skate Canada Challenge, Burnaby’s Aleksa Rakic did the same – this time, for an appreciative home crowd.
The Champs International Skating Centre of B.C. athlete registered the second-best score at last week’s Canadian Tire national skating championships at UBC.
His two-event tally of 136.76 in the novice men’s competition put him behind only Alec Guinzbourg of Ontario.
Rakic posted the second-best results in both the short (47.22) and free (89.54) programs, but was right on Guinzbourg’s heels prior to the free, where the Ontario skater was awarded a 10-point lead.
It was a reversal from the Skate Canada Challenge, where Rakic finished with a near 20-point advantage.
In eighth place was another Champs skater, Gabriel Blumenthal, with 102.70 points. In 11th place was Shuma Muglii, while Burnaby’s Christopher Fan stood 16th.
The showdown in senior men’s ended in a surprise, with Champs’ Kevin Reynolds falling outside the medals for the first time since 2015, when he withdrew due to injury. Reynolds placed fifth with 249.30 points, after standing second following the short program.
Brian Le placed fifth in the junior men’s, with identical fifth-place scores in both events.
In the senior women’s division, Burnaby’s Sarah Tamura was poised to improve on last year’s fifth-place debut after a strong third-place in the short program.
Unfortunately, the uber-competitive division saw her slide to eighth overall, after scoring the ninth-best score in the free skate.
In 11th place was Kelsey Wong, who gave a strong performance in the free skate, rated 10th, after starting the event with the 13th-best score in the short program.
Champs’ Amanda Tobin, originally from Ontario, placed 13th.
Burnaby’s Vasilisa Matanseva, the 2016 pre-novice national champion, made her first foray as a junior skater, finishing eighth. After the 14th-best result in short program, Matanseva climbed the standings with the sixth-best score in free skate.
