Maxim Naumov, a 24-year-old figure skater, was named to the United States’ Winter Olympic team for next month’s games in Milan one year after his parents — former figure skaters Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov — were killed in a plane crash.
The couple — two-time Olympians who won the World Championships in pairs in 1994 — were among the 67 people killed when an American Airlines plane collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River in January 2024.
Naumov finished third at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships over the weekend in St. Louis, and in an emotional scene Thursday, he held a photo of his parents and kissed it as he waited to find out his score.
“We did it,” Naumov said after finding out about making his first Olympic team, according to the Los Angeles Times. “We absolutely did it.”
The Hartford, Conn. native’s parents were among 28 people connected to the figure skating community — flying back from a figure skating championship and development camp in Nashville — who were on the flight when it tragically crashed.
Naumov returned home on an earlier flight after competing in the event and finishing fourth, and one of his final conversations with his parents — who were coaches at the Skating Club of Boston — was about the 2026 Olympics and trying to qualify for the team, according to the Associated Press.
In March, Naumov, the son of two Russian-born parents, delivered an emotional performance at a charity event in honor of the victims of the crash that occurred near Ronald Reagan International Airport, dropping to his knees and weeping afterward.
That same month, Naumov opened up to the “Today” show about the gut-wrenching tragedy, including how they had asked him to pick them up from the airport and how they were “beautiful people” who were “so incredibly kind.”
“The only way out is through,” Naumov said during his segment. “There’s no other way. There are no options but to keep going. I don’t have the strength or the passion or the drive, or the dedication of one person anymore. It’s three people.”
And now, he’ll get a chance to compete in Milan starting next month alongside Ilia Malinin and Andrew Torgashev, who were the other U.S. representatives for men’s figure skating.
“It’s all about being resilient,” Naumov said, before the weekend, about making his return to the national event, according to the AP. “That’s the feeling and mentality I’ve clung to this entire season. And I find in times of really difficult emotional stress, if you can just push yourself a little bit more, and almost think, ‘What if? What if I can do it? What if, despite everything that happened to me, I can go out and do it?’
“And that is where you find strength, and that’s where you grow as a person.”
