Maxim Naumov will be taking part in the 2026 Olympic Winter Games in Milan after finishing third at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
The 24-year-old figure skater received the news one year after his parents, former figure skaters Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, were tragically killed when a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter collided with an American Airlines flight over the Potomac River in 2025. Shishkova and Naumov were two-time Olympians and were on the flight with “28 people connected to the figure skating community, flying back from a figure skating championship and development camp in Nashville” when the shocking crash occurred.
“We did it. We absolutely did it,” Naumov, who had kissed a picture of his parents as he waited for the scores to be announced, said after finding out he had made the Olympic team, the Los Angeles Times reports.
TRUE STRENGTH. 💪
Maxim Naumov’s powerful 163.44 free skate locks in the FIRST U.S. Figure Skating Championships podium of his senior career. pic.twitter.com/kpyK49WEeo
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) January 11, 2026
Team USA posted a video of the elated skater receiving his Olympic jacket, smiling with pride:
Olympic dream achieved for Maxim Naumov 🥹
📺 @nbc & @peacock #WinterOlympics | #MTUSA pic.twitter.com/WtU3vwV8JZ
— Team USA (@TeamUSA) January 12, 2026
“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,” the New York Post wrote.
He had previously discussed his grief over the loss of his parents and spoke about carrying the dreams of his parents with him.
“The only way out is through,” Naumov said on Today. “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.”
Now he will be carrying those dreams all the way to Milan to compete for his country on the Olympic stage.
“It’s all about being resilient,” Naumov reportedly said. “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.”
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Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to write. Marlee also contributes to BizPac Review.
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