Maxim Naumov makes US Winter Olympics team year after parents’ death in DC plane crash | Figure skating

U.S. Figure Skating has confirmed the 16 athletes who will represent Team USA at next month’s Milan-Cortina Games in Italy, including Maxim Naumov, who lived up to his late parents’ hopes by making the Olympic team.

Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, 1994 world pairs figure skating champions for Russia, became coaches at the Skating Club of Boston. Last January, they were returning from Wichita, Kansas, host of the 2025 U.S. championships, with 26 others linked to figure skating, when their plane collided with a military helicopter, killing everyone on board both planes.

Maxim Naumov said he regularly discussed with his parents the possibility of following in their footsteps by becoming an Olympian.

“I would not be sitting here without the unimaginable work, effort and love of my parents,” Naumov said on Sunday. “It means absolutely everything to me, realizing the dream that we’ve had collectively as a family since I first stepped on the ice at the age of five. So it means absolutely everything. And I know they’re looking down, smiling and proud.”

He will compete in men’s singles with world champion Ilia Malinin, who just won his fourth consecutive national title. Malinin will be the hot favorite to follow in Nathan Chen’s footsteps by delivering another men’s gold medal to the American team when he takes to the ice at the Milan rink.

Ice dancing duo Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who won their record seventh U.S. title Saturday night, will also be among the Olympic favorites, as will world champion Alysa Liu and her women’s teammate Amber Glenn, who won her third consecutive national title this weekend.

“I’m so excited about the Olympic spirit and the Olympic environment,” Malinin said. “I hope I go for that Olympic gold medal.”

Malinin will be joined on the men’s side by Naumov and Andrew Torgashev, the 24-year-old all-or-nothing player from Coral Springs, Florida.

Chock and Bates helped the Americans win team gold at the Beijing Games four years ago, but they finished fourth in the ice dancing competition. Since then, they have virtually finished only first, winning three consecutive world championships and the gold medal in three consecutive Grand Prix finals.

American silver medalists Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik also made the dance team, as did Canadian Christina Carreira, who became eligible for the Olympics in November after obtaining her American citizenship, and Anthony Ponomarenko.

Liu was chosen for her second Olympic team after briefly retiring following the Beijing Games. She had been exhausted from years of training and competition, but stepping away seemed to rejuvenate the 20-year-old, and she returned to win the first world title won by an American since Kimmie Meissner took the podium two decades ago.

Now, the forward-thinking Liu will try to help Team USA win its first women’s medal since Sasha Cohen in Turin in 2006, and the first gold since Sarah Hughes triumphed four years earlier at the Salt Lake City Games.

Liu’s biggest competition, besides a strong Japanese contingent, might come from her own teammates: Glenn, a first-time Olympics participant, has been nearly unbeatable the past two years, while 18-year-old Isabeau Levito is a former world silver medalist.

“This was my goal and my dream and it’s so special that it came true,” said Levito, whose mother is from Milan.

The two duet spots went to Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea, the American silver medalists, and the team of Emily Chan and Spencer Howe.

The top U.S. pairs team, consisting of two-time defending U.S. champions Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov, hoped Finland’s Efimova would obtain her citizenship in time to compete in Italy. But despite the efforts of the Skating Club of Boston, where they train, and the help of their U.S. senators, she did not receive her passport before the selection deadline.

“The importance and magnitude of being selected for an Olympic team is one of the most important steps in an athlete’s life,” said U.S. Figure Skating CEO Matt Farrell, “and it has such an impact, and even though there are rules sometimes, there’s also a human element to it that we really have to consider when we’re making decisions and what’s best to do in a selection process. Sometimes it’s not easy, and this isn’t the fun part.”