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Geometry Difficulty 7.5 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it Romania

Let ABCABC be a scalene triangle. The tangents to the nine-point circle at the foot of the perpendicular dropped from AA on the line BCBC and at the midpoint of the side BCBC meet at the point AA'; the points BB' and CC' are defined similarly. Prove that the lines AAAA', BBBB' and CCCC' are concurrent.

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Solution

The tangent at AA to the circumcircle ABCABC meets the line BCBC at the point AA''; the points BB'' and CC'' are defined similarly. The points AA'', BB'' and CC'' are collinear on Lemoine's line. We shall prove that the lines AAAA', BBBB' and CCCC' are the polars of the points AA'', BB'' and CC'', respectively, relative to the nine-point circle γ\gamma, so they are indeed concurrent. Clearly, it is sufficient to prove that that AAAA' is the polar of AA'' with respect to γ\gamma.

Let A1,B1A_1, B_1 and C1C_1 be the perpendicular feet dropped from A,BA, B and CC, respectively, on the lines BC,CABC, CA and ABAB, respectively. Let further A2A_2 be the midpoint of the side BCBC, and let A3A_3 be the midpoint of the segment joining AA to the orthocenter of the triangle ABCABC. It is easily seen that the line A2A3A_2A_3 is the perpendicular bisector of the segment B1C1B_1C_1, so it is perpendicular to the tangent at AA to the circumcircle ABCABC. Consequently, A3A_3 is the orthocenter of the triangle AAA2AA''A_2, so the lines AA2AA_2 and AA3A''A_3 are perpendicular; it is easily seen that they meet at some point on γ\gamma, so AA'' lies on the polar of AA with respect to γ\gamma. Finally, AA'' lies on BCBC, which is the polar of AA' with respect to γ\gamma, so AA'' is the pole of AAAA' with respect to γ\gamma.

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