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Armenia again was a breath away from pulling off a tense victory at Junior Eurovision Saturday night as its teenage participant saw rivals catch up and outdo only in a dramatic last round of tele-voting.

Luara Hayrapetyan, 12, staged a good performance of her upbeat soccer anthem “Go, Barcelona!” at the pan-European contest’s grand finale in Kiev, Ukraine, drawing cheers and applause from the local audience.

The Armenian participant was also doing well in the tele-voting after the show with her song scoring high and Armenia staying on top (or close to top) among 13 participating nations until the last national voting results were announced.

Armenia needed at least a 7-pointer from the last announcer, Macedonia, to become the winner, but eventually got only one point. Her rival, the Netherlands, meanwhile got a high score of 10 that enabled its participant Ralf to win the contest with a total of 121 points scored for his Click Clack song. Armenia and Russia, meanwhile, shared the second and third places with 116 points each.

The dramatic finish resembled the 2007 Armenia debut at Junior Eurovision when its participant, the Arevik children’s and youth pop-folk ensemble, stayed in the lead among 17 nations almost for the whole duration of the voting and was unseated from the top spot by Belarus only after the last round of voting from the rival nation (proving a point short of victory).

This time Armenia’s maximum 12 points came from Cyprus, Russia and Georgia; Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden gave the young Armenian singer 10 points; 8 points came from Belarus and 7 points from Serbia, while Malta and Romania gave Armenia 6 points each.

Meanwhile, Armenia’s maximum went to Ukraine’s ethnic Armenian performer Andranik Aleksanyan, who finished in fifth place. The rest of Armenia’s voting was as follows: Russia (10 points), the Netherlands (8), Belgium (7), Georgia (6), Sweden (5), Malta (4), Serbia (3), Cyprus (2) and Belarus (1).

(Source: the Contest’s official website www.junioreurovision.tv)

For full scoreboard and final standings for the 2009 Junior Eurovision Song Contest visit www.junioreurovision.tv