We’re not saying grief helped Maxim Naumov skate like his whole heart was on the line.

But we’re not saying it didn’t.

One year after his parents, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, were killed in a plane-helicopter collision near Washington, D.C., Maxim Naumov stepped onto national ice holding a photo of the three of them. Then he skated.
He didn’t win. But he absolutely owned it.


Grief doesn’t hand out medals. But sometimes it becomes the thing that keeps you upright when everything else has fallen away.Maxim didn’t leave his parents behind. He brought them with him. You don’t outskate heartbreak. You skate with it. Pulling to see you on that Olympic ice, Maxim.