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What is the purpose of toe picks on figure-skating blades?
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figure skating
Katarina Witt, competing for East Germany, became the first woman since Norway's Sonja Henie (1928, 1932, and 1936) to win consecutive Olympic gold medals, doing so in 1984 and 1988.
The toe pick is a set of serrations located at the front of a figure skating blade. Its primary purpose is to assist the skater in performing specific maneuvers, particularly jumps.1
In competitive figure skating, jumps are categorized into two types: edge jumps and toe jumps. When executing a toe jump—which includes the flip, lutz, and toe loop—the skater plants the toe pick into the ice to gain the necessary leverage to launch themselves into the air. By planting the pick, the skater can effectively "pole vault" off the ice to initiate the jump's rotation.2