RIGA, Latvia – Margaret Purdy of Strathroy, Ont., and Michael Marinaro of Sarnia, Ont., won the bronze medal in pairs on Friday at the opening event on the ISU junior Grand Prix figure skating circuit.

Sui Wenjing and Han Cong led China to a 1-2 finish tabulating 152.08 points. Yu Xiaoyou and Yang Jin of China were second at 139.70 and Purdy and Marinaro posted a personal best score and their best Junior Grand Prix result in five appearances earning 134.46.

"It feels really good to get on the podium, that was our goal," said Marinaro, 19, three years older than his partner. "We’ve trained really hard and we just wanted to duplicate what we did in practice today."

The Canadians landed their new side-by-side triple toe jump in the long program skated to the music of Queen.

"What we wanted to improve upon this year is how we skated to the music," said Purdy, in her fifth season skating with Marinaro. "We never got ahead of ourselves."

The short dance in ice dancing was also held Friday. Andréanne Poulin of L’Ile-Bizard, Que., and Marc-André Servant of Vaudreuil, Que., stand sixth at 43.61. Maria Nosulia and Evgen Kholoniuk of Ukraine lead at 52.62, Evgenia Kosigina and Nikolai Moroshkin of Russia follow at 49.76 and their compatriots Daria Morozova and Mikhail Zhirnov are third at 49.56.

In the men’s short program Thursday, 13-year-old Nam Nguyen of Burnaby, B.C., the Canadian junior champion, is 12th.

For more information visit: www.isu.org