While the winners of the weekend’s U.S. National Figure Skating Championships in St. Louis had booked a spot to compete in the Winter Olympics, there was still drama Sunday at the announcement of the U.S. Olympic team.
US Figure Skating announced the 16 athletes who will represent the country at the Milan-Cortina Games in Italy next month, including newly crowned national men’s champion Ilia Malinin, first-time Olympian Amber Glenn in the women’s competition and seven-time national titlists Madison Chock and Evan Bates in ice dancing.
Maxim Naumov, who finished third on Saturday behind Malinin’s dominant performance, has a heartbreaking legacy in the sport.
His parents, who competed for Russia in two Olympics, were among the 67 who died in a plane crash last Jan. 29 in Washington, D.C.
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Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, who were world pairs figure skating champions in 1994, became coaches at the Skating Club of Boston.
They were returning from Wichita, Kansas, host of the 2025 U.S. Championships, along with 26 others involved in figure skating, when their plane collided with a military helicopter, killing everyone aboard both planes.
Maxim Naumov, a 24-year-old from Simsbury, Connecticut, said he talked to his parents all the time about following them as an Olympian.
On Sunday he was told he was part of the American team.
“I wouldn’t be sitting here without the incredible work effort and love of my parents,” Naumov said at a press conference on Sunday. “It means absolutely everything to me, fulfilling the dream we’ve had together as a family since I first stepped on the ice at age 5. So it means absolutely everything. And I know they’re looking down, smiling and proud.”
He will compete in men’s singles with Malinin, a 21-year-old from Fairfax, Virginia, who won his fourth straight title and will make his Olympic debut, and Andrew Torgashev, 24, who finished second at the national championships.
Glenn, 26, who won her third straight national title, is joined by teammates Alysa Liu, 20, the reigning world champion, and Isabeau Levito, 18, the 2023 national champion.
Couple Chock, 33, and Bates, 36, have won five national titles in a row and seven in total, a record. They have competed together in three previous Olympics, without medaling as a duo but earning gold in the 2022 team event in Beijing.
They are joined by the ice dance teams of Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik, and Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarkenko.
The duo teams are Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea, and Emily Chan and Spencer Howe. The drama came with the exclusion of two-time reigning US titlists Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov. Born in Finland, Efimova was trying to get her U.S. citizenship approved before Sunday’s selection deadline so she could compete in the Olympics. The Club of Boston, their home training base, tried to help her and enlisted the help of U.S. Senators, but the deadline passed.
Kam and O’Shea won silver at the national championships, and Chan and Howe finished fourth. The third-place pairing team, Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman, also did not qualify for the Olympic team because Parkman was born in Russia and does not have a U.S. passport.
The 2026 Winter Games are from February 6 to 22 in Milan and Cortina, Italy.
