By Rory Carroll
MILAN, Feb 10 (Reuters) – U.S. figure skater Maxim Naumov said he felt the presence of his late parents as he made his Olympic debut on Tuesday at the Milan Cortina Games, delivering an emotional performance a little over a year after they were killed in a plane crash near Washington, D.C.
Naumov’s parents were among the 67 people who died in January 2025 when an American Airlines flight collided midair with an Army helicopter.
“I felt like I was guided by them today,” Naumov told reporters.
“With every glide and step that I made on the ice, I couldn’t help but feel their support. They were guiding me from one element to another,” he said.
“At the end, I finished on my knees, and I didn’t know if I was going to cry, smile or laugh, and all I could do was look up and say, ‘Look what we just did.'”
His parents, Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova – the 1994 world champions in pairs who later became coaches – were among 28 figure skating coaches, young athletes and parents returning from a development camp who died in the crash.
As he waited for his score, the 24-year-old from Norwood, Massachusetts, held up a childhood photo of himself holding hands with his parents as spectators at the Milano Ice Skating Arena cheered.
“It’s the picture of me the first time on the ice when I was three years old. I carry them so I never, ever forget,” he said.
“They’re right here in my cross-body bag, so it’s literally here on my chest, on my heart,” he said.
“I wanted them to sit in the kiss-and-cry with me and experience the moment, look up at the scores, and just live in this moment,” he added.
“They deserve to be sat right next to me like they always have been.”
HEARTFELT PERFORMANCE
Skating to Frederic Chopin’s sorrowful “Nocturne No. 20,” Naumov opened with a gorgeous quadruple Salchow and finished looking skyward and smiling before covering his eyes with his hands.
Initially, he was unsure whether he wanted to keep competing in the wake of the tragedy, but on Tuesday said skating had been a source of comfort for him and that he was satisfied with his score of 85.65.
“To be honest, I wasn’t thinking about executing anything perfectly,” he said.
“I just wanted to go out there and put my heart out, really leave everything out there, have no regrets at all after the end of that programme, and that’s exactly what I felt.
“I couldn’t be more proud of myself and my team. And the job’s not finished. We’ve still got one more to go,” he added.
Naumov will compete in the free skate on Friday.
The crash was the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster since November 2001.
Last week, a bipartisan group of U.S. House lawmakers said they planned to introduce legislation addressing a series of safety recommendations after the crash.
Leading members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Armed Services Committee said in a joint statement they were working “expeditiously on legislation to ensure a crash like this can never happen again”.
(Reporting by Rory Carroll and Lori Ewing in Milan, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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