As he was called to the ice to begin his program last Tuesday night at the Milano Ice Skating Arena, Maxim Naumov, crossed himself, right to left, Orthodox style. After completing his program, he sat awaiting the marks for his short program in a small portion of the arena officially referred to as the “kiss and cry.” Naumov held a photograph over his heart of himself as a 3-year-old boy taking his earliest steps on the ice, with his mother, Evgenia Shishkova, and his father, Vadim Naumov, on either side of him. Max showed the picture to the camera and then briefly buried his face behind the photo, for once making the “kiss and cry” live up to the latter part of its name, at least in the Jesuit rec room in Los Angeles where I sat by myself watching.
All three of the U.S. skaters competing in the men’s single figure skating event at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina-Milano are the progeny of skaters. More specifically, all three are the sons of top-level skaters raised and trained in the former Soviet Union. Ilia Malinin, who is well on the way to becoming the greatest skater ever and is taking the athleticism of the sport to another level. (That’s not hyperbole; he has already landed a quadruple axel, which is four and a half revolutions in the air, something that even four years ago seemed beyond possibility.) He is the son of Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skourniakov, both of Russian heritage, who after the dissolution of the Soviet Union skated for the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan before settling in as coaches in Virginia.
The parents of the U.S. team’s second best male skater, Andrew Torgashev, never made it to the Olympic and World level but toured with ice shows before settling in the United States. Of the three men, however, it is Naumov’s parents who were the most celebrated: Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov were World pairs champions in 1994 and finished fourth at the Olympics in Lillehammer that year. I remember cheering for them at the Games as I love a good underdog (I am a Cubs fan, after all), and they, though fourth in the world, were only the third Russian pair.
As it happens, the other two Russian teams that year were two of the most renowned pairs in skating history. Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov were gold medalists at the 1988 and 1994 Olympics; Natalia Mishketuniok and Artur Dmitriev were gold medalists in 1992 and silver medalists to Gordeeva and Grinkov in Lillehammer. Shishkova and Naumov also wound up coming to the States, focusing their energy on young skaters through the Skating Club of Boston.
Narrative is fundamental to televised sport, especially in the Olympics, because save for a few exceptions like ice hockey, most people come into contact with Olympic sports like skating (speed or figure), skiing (alpine or cross-country) or curling (just one kind of curling) only every four years or so. Audiences need to know about the athletes they are watching, know their stories and identify with them in some way. When it comes to Olympic viewing, patriotism goes only so far. Television audiences want someone to root for, and they want to know why they are rooting for them. Whether it be through brief athlete profiles during the telecasts (remember Up Close and Personal segments from ABC’s coverage of the Olympics in the 1980s?) or snippets during the morning news or online, personal narratives do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of drawing and sustaining viewers over the course of the 16 days of glory, as the Olympics are often called.
Enter Maxim Naumov. He does not have your typical Olympian “hero’s journey” that has been foundational to televised Olympic broadcasting since its inception in the United States at the 1960 Winter Games in Squaw Valley. (You know the story. A kid from [insert name of American small-town name here] takes up [insert obscure Olympic sport here] at [insert pre-double-digit age here] and against all odds overcomes [insert financial, physical, emotional obstacle(s) here] to realize their dream and becomes an Olympian.)
Naumov lost his parents on Jan. 29, 2025, when both were passengers on American Eagle Flight 5342 that collided with a military Black Hawk helicopter over Washington, D.C. Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, along with 65 others, 28 of whom were members of the United States figure skating community, were flying from the National Championships in Wichita to a training camp in the D.C. area. Naumov had just finished fourth in the men’s division of the U.S. Championships for the third consecutive year, which also meant that he would just miss for the third consecutive year competing at the World Championships, the biggest event in the sport, outside of the Olympic Games.
In January of this year, Maxim Naumov had his best-ever finish in the U.S. Championships in St. Louis, not only locking up the bronze medal but, more important, clinching a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. That he had his best finish ever at the National Championships less than a year after losing both parents, speaks not only to his incredible passion and drive for the sport, but also speaks to a deep spiritual resilience and faith in something beyond the here and now.
Naumov said in an interview just weeks after his parents’ death, “The only way out is through, and everyone has the ability do that, to remain strong in your mind, to have will power, and do things out of love instead of fear.” He has also said repeatedly that over the course of the past year he now has the strength, passion and drive of three people and feels his parents’ presence whenever he sets foot upon the ice.
He made this evident for a global audience last Tuesday night, skating to Chopin’s Nocturne No. 20, also known as “Reminiscence,” a musical selection that could not have been more appropriate. Naumov said while skating the program that he felt a “calmness and stillness” through his entire body. That calmness and stillness was palpable to the audience of nearly 10,000 watching live in Milan, as well as to the millions watching across the globe. Naumov’s skate was more than a skate, it became a prayer, as he publicly grieved his parents—former Olympic skaters—with his skating at the Olympics.
And we grieved with him. It did not for one moment feel exploitative or contrived. It was public prayer of the very best kind, somehow emerging out of that dinner theater of all sports, figure skating. It was one man grieving and the entire world carrying him along. This moment moved beyond narrative and became a spiritual experience, however brief, before his team partner Malinin jarred us back into reality with his unimaginable collection of quadruple jumps. But for approximately two and a half minutes on an ice rink in Milan the world seemed to come together for a gentle, collective sigh.
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