Maxim Naumov made sure his parents were with him for his Olympic debut Tuesday in Milan.
Following his short program at Milano Ice Skating Arena, the U.S. figure skater emotionally kissed a photo of himself as a child with his parents — former skaters Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkov, who died in the plane collision in January 2025 outside Washington D.C. that killed 67 people.
The 24-year-old Conncticut native was the second of 29 scheduled skaters in the short program and executed a clean skate featuring a quadruple Salchow for a score of 86.65, his best of the season.
“Look at what we just did,” Naumov said in a tribute to his parents during a post-skate interview on USA Network. “Absolutely, as soon as I hit that first [jump], usually my body is shaking really hard in that moment, and I tend to rush a lot, but this time the ease and the smoothness of everything, the way I was setting up for everything, I felt like someone was just guiding me almost along the ice as I was going.
“So I most definitely felt their presence here.”
Before his emotional performance generated a standing ovation, Naumov’s message to his parents was shown on the arena scoreboard, reading, “Mom and Dad, this is for you.”
His parents were a former pairs skating team for Russia who competed in the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics.
Vadim and Evgenia Naumov, who later ran a skating school in Massachusetts, were among 28 figure skating coaches, athletes and parents killed while returning from a development camp last year.