A Year After Losing His Parents in a Plane Crash, Maxim Naumov Makes His Olympic Debut
Jan. 29 will always be an emotionally loaded day for figure skater Maxim Naumov.
On that date in 2025, his parents and skating coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov died in a plane crash over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., while returning home from a skating competition.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]This year, the week of Jan. 29, it was Naumov who was on a plane, heading to Italy to compete in his first Olympics.
When the men’s figure skaters take the ice in Milan, many eyes will be on gold-medal favorite Ilia Malinin, whose mastery of quadruple jumps is setting new standards for the sport. But there will be an equal amount of passion and compassion for Naumov, who had discussed making the Olympic team with his parents, also Olympians and world champions in pairs, since almost the day he began skating as a toddler.
“We did it,” Naumov, 24, said repeatedly after being named to the U.S. Olympic team in January. “We did it.”
Naumov very much sees this first trip to the Olympics as a group effort. His parents remain the mental and spiritual core of his journey, even if they aren’t physically here to join him. Skating coaches Elena and Vladimir Petrenko, close friends of his parents, took him under their wing despite living in a different state to give him the emotional support he needed to get back on the ice after such a tragic and sudden loss. His godmother Gretta Bogdan and her husband, Tony, together with the Petrenkos, make sure Naumov is fed, cared for, and never feeling alone. And last but certainly not least, his skating family at the Skating Club of Boston, where his parents were coaches and where he trains, has been there for him throughout this difficult year.
“He wanted to fulfill the Olympic dream for the three of them,” says Doug Zeghibe, CEO of the Skating Club of Boston. “It has never been just about Max.”
The Petrenkos had known Shishkova and Naumov since their competitive skating days in the then Soviet Union. “We were on the USSR junior team together; that’s where I met them,” says Vladimir. Petrenko skated in an ice show in 1994 with his brother, Olympic gold medalist Viktor, and Olympic champions Oksana Baiul and Brian Boitano, but because of a back injury, began coaching at the International Skating Center of Connecticut. Several years later, the skating director there invited Shishkova and Naumov to join the coaching team as well. The couples formed a bond, becoming like family and sharing every major milestone together. “We were in the hospital when Genia [gave birth to Max], and we saw Max from the very beginning,” says Vladimir.
Shishkova and Naumov were also present for the birth of the Petrenkos’ two sons, and the three boys grew up as brothers. “We don’t have family here when we came to the U.S., so we rely on each other,” says Elena. “We supported each other and we have been more than just friends—it’s a family-like feeling.”
In 2015, Max’s parents decided to move from Connecticut to Boston to join the skating staff at the Skating Club of Boston. At the time, the club was building a new facility in Norwood, Mass., and “there was a lot of suspicion about a nonprofit running a $68 million facility,” says Zeghibe. “But Genia and Vadim said, ‘We believe in you.’” The couple launched a new program, Tomorrow’s Champions, that focused on training young skaters in the group-based method they had learned in St. Petersburg.
On the night of Jan. 29, 2025, Vladimir was in Mexico to give a seminar with his brother Viktor. Back in Connecticut, Elena went to bed, and while she usually turns off her phone for the night, she left it on that evening. Around three in the morning, she was awakened by the constant beeping of her text alerts. One of the first messages was from Gretta Bogdan, who asked her to call her right away. “She said, ‘You know, on this plane Genia and Vadim were there,’” Elena says. “People say you lose the earth under your feet—I lost my balance. I fell.”
Altogether, six people from the Skating Club of Boston had been on that flight; all had remained a few days after the U.S. national championships for a development camp, which allows young skaters to take advantage of additional training and expertise from the country’s best coaches, including Shishkova and Naumov.
“It’s still a shock to all of us,” says Elena. “It’s hard to believe to this day. Sometimes I feel I will hear Genia and Vadim and we will meet up to go to a party. They are still so present with us; to me it feels like they have gone on a somewhat long business trip or on vacation. We don’t realize they are gone, physically gone. It’s just weird.”
For Max Naumov, losing both his parents and his coaches was a double blow, and for weeks he wasn’t able to get out of bed. But Vladimir says that while it was hard for him to return to the ice, Naumov came back to pick up where his parents left off with their Tomorrow’s Champions program. “For him, it was hard to put skates on, but he was on the ice with skaters who skated with Genia and Vadim and he was teaching them,” says Vladimir.
The Bogdans and Petrenkos made it clear to Naumov that they would follow his lead about his future and allowed him to make all the decisions about his parents’ funeral, including where they would be buried. The Bogdans stayed with him so he wasn’t ever alone, and in the spring, Naumov called Vladimir to ask if he would help fill the gap left by his parents on the coaching staff. “Vladimir had not even a second thought about going to Norwood Monday to Friday,” says Elena, despite having to care for his elderly father and her elderly mother.
Vladimir stayed with Naumov during the week and returned to Connecticut on the weekend, and after a few more months, Naumov decided to spend some time in Europe to clear his mind and decide whether he wanted to continue skating competitively. The U.S. Figure Skating connected him with Benoit Richaud, a coach and choreographer based in Nice. While there, Naumov called Vladimir and asked if he would come to France.
“We talked, and he asked if we could work together—that he wants to skate [competitively],” says Vladimir.
Without hesitating, Vladimir agreed. “He has a calm, quiet wisdom about him and exudes confidence,” says Zeghibe. “He is not just a technique-driven coach but an incredible stabilizing coach for Max during a very destabilizing time.”
Growing up in Connecticut, Naumov took lessons from Vladimir in the morning and his father in the afternoon. “Once I decided I was going to come back, I wanted to have somebody that I can trust, somebody that I worked with in the past and knows what they’re talking about,” he says. “He knows me as an athlete and as a person. He’s the kindest, sweetest guy, and always joking and putting a smile on my face. And on difficult days, sometimes that’s what gets me through.”
Once he made up his mind to skate competitively, Naumov focused on making the dream he and his parents had always talked about a reality. After finishing fourth at the U.S. nationals three years in a row, one of the last conversations he and his parents had was about reframing their approach to this season to maximize his chances of making the Olympic team.
His mother was always too nervous to watch him skate, he says, and last year, she was sick during nationals, so he and his father went to their hotel room after his skate. It was one of the last conversations they would have. “It was a 45-minute conversation and my dad laid out a whole plan for this entire season of what to do, how to do it, and when,” says Naumov. “I said, ‘OK, Dad, OK.’ He said we have to change our mindset and change our approach—be consistent where we haven’t been before and be strong and resilient. That’s exactly what I carried through this entire season, and I think frequently about those exact words that night and try every day to do that.”
Naumov shared that plan with Vladimir, and it included completing two quad jumps in the free program and achieving the highest-level spins and footwork, which would maximize the points he earned. “His programs this season are different than [the ones] he used to do,” says Vladimir. “That’s for sure. We worked on consistency, technique, and control.”
Still, the journey has been challenging, as everyone involved is still grieving while facing the incredible pressures of training for an Olympics. “I think we used all our 30-plus years of parenting and coaching experience since the end of July to this day,” says Elena. “Slowly, with a lot of patience, with a lot of love, and with tons of talking and crying and being honest with each other, we found the right strategy. There is no thesis to read, or PhD to look through or ask someone. And Max trusted us. We are extremely thankful to Max that he trusted us.”
Naumov is now on-ice director of the Tomorrow’s Champions program, but since deciding to train for an Olympic berth, he has been helped by Vladislav Mirzoev, a coach from St. Petersburg whom his father had advocated for. “Vadim came to me asking for additional coaching help and said he had found a young man in St. Petersburg that no one had heard of and wanted our help in bringing him to the U.S.,” says Zeghibe. He wasn’t a well-known coach, and Zeghibe told Vadim that the club wouldn’t support his visa. But Mirzoev was persistent, contacting Zeghibe to make his case.
Zeghibe scheduled a Zoom call and was impressed enough to invite him to coach in the Tomorrow’s Champions program at the end of last summer. “When I told Vadim that we had changed our mind on this, I think he had tears in his eyes, and he hugged me very close, thanked me profusely, and said he was the future of the program,” says Zeghibe. “It was so prophetic. It still makes me wonder whether on some level Vadim knew Vladislav and Max would be the future of the program, and he had to get going on it.”
There are legacies of Shishkova and Naumov throughout the Boston and broader skating communities, not least in the person their son has become and the values that he embodies both on and off the ice.
“I came into the competition thinking how grateful I am for even the ability to compete,” Naumov said at the U.S. championships, where he won bronze. “The fact that I overcame so much, and looking back to not even being able to lace up my skates and not thinking I would be able to compete, let alone skate, to what I did today—I don’t even have words. I’ve learned to never take a day for granted ever again.”