Vadim Naumov was introduced to Evgenia “Zhenya” Shishkova in 1985 in what was still known then as the city of Leningrad. His coach had a notion that the two should work on a few routines to see if they might make a potentially great figure skating pairs team representing the Soviet Union.
A headstrong 16-year-old, Naumov wasn’t enamoured of the prospect. At all. Only when his regular partner fell ill did he finally agree to give Shishkova, three years his junior, her shot. In one of their earliest training sessions, the teens landed a triple jump. The chemistry between them was undeniable; they were destined to grow up and compete together on the biggest stages.
Having come agonisingly close at a couple of Olympics, managing fourth and fifth place finishes, they won the 1994 World Championships in Japan. Shortly after that, the couple, by then married, turned professional and moved to the United States. Eventually, they started coaching at the International Skating Center in Simsbury, Connecticut and their son Maxim was born in 2001.
Highly respected and sought-after coaches, Naumov and Shishkova were in Wichita, Kansas for the US National Championships last January and stayed on after the event to work with the next generation of promising skaters at a development camp. Lending their expertise, bringing all that experience to bear.
READ MORE
Participating in that is why they were passengers on American Eagle Flight 5342 that collided with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter on the landing approach into Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington DC. They were among 28 members of the American skating community, including coaches, teen prospects and parents, killed in the crash.
Maxim Naumov had competed in Kansas that week but headed for home earlier than his parents. So, like everybody else, he saw the video footage of that horrific coming together in the darkness of the night sky above the Potomac River, the accident that made him a 23-year-old orphan.
“It’s all about being resilient,” said Maxim Naumov shortly before competing at this year’s US Figure Skating Championships in St Louis, Missouri. “That’s the feeling and the mentality I’ve clung on to this entire season. And I find that in times of really difficult emotional stress, if you can just push yourself a little bit more – almost think, ‘what if, despite everything that happened to me, I can still go out there and do it?’ – that’s where you find strength. And that’s when you grow as a person. And that is exactly what’s been getting me through every day.”
Inevitably, his very presence at that event in the St Louis Enterprise Center earlier this month came loaded with emotional significance. The spotlight was on him throughout. At one point, while he sat in the “kiss and cry” section of the arena where competitors await their scores on camera, he held up a photograph of himself with his parents. In the picture, he was three years old and had just skated on ice for the first time.
Nobody knew if he would ever compete seriously again after their deaths, yet here he was trying to punch his ticket for next month’s Winter Olympics in Milan. His participation was described by one commentator as “the heartsong” of the championships.
Naumov finished third overall in the nationals and had to wait to see if that was enough to convince the USA selectors. It was. He is not fancied to medal in Italy – his compatriot Ilia Malinin, known as the “Quad God”, is favoured to win gold. However, by making the Olympic squad, Naumov has garnered headlines far beyond the sport. It is a feelgood story at a time when the US desperately needs some.
Zhenya Shishkova could not bear to watch her son skate live from his early teens, but one of the final conversations Maxim had with his parents involved what he needed to work on to get to the Olympics. All his life, that had been the shared goal.
“All of our grief, all of our mourning, everything was set on his shoulders,” said 1984 gold medallist Scott Hamilton when introducing Naumov at the official announcement of the USA squad. “He became a source of hope and inspiration and strength in the storm. And now, dreams come true and all of our wishes for him and his goodwill came to fruition in St Louis. A dream come true for all of us.”
Following the plane crash, Naumov took over the family’s youth academy at the Skating Club of Boston, where his parents had moved to in 2017. A full-time gig, that might have consumed all his time until Vladimir Petrenko offered to come on board as his coach.
A contemporary of Maxim’s parents, Petrenko had shared an office with them at the rink in Connecticut for years. As somebody who watched Maxim take his first steps on the ice all those years ago, he felt like he owed it to Vadim and Zhenya to do everything he could for their child.
For the free-skate performance that clinched his place at the Olympics, Naumov chose The Irrepressibles’ In This Shirt as his musical accompaniment.
That song includes the lyric:
“And I′ve bled, every day now
For a year, for a year
I did send you a note
On the wind, for to read
Our names, there together"
