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Figure skater Maxim Naumov has made the 2026 U.S. Olympic team one year after his parents died in the American Airlines plane crashNaumov’s parents were 1994 World Figure Skating pairs champions Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, and also served as his coachesThe 24-year-old was named to the men’s team, along with Ilia Malinin and Andrew Torgashev

Maxim Naumov has officially been named to the 2026 U.S. Olympic team, one year after the American Airlines tragedy claimed the lives of his parents and 65 others.

The 24-year-old figure skater, whose parents were 1994 World Figure Skating pairs champions Evgenia “Zhenya” Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, was announced as one of the three men competing for Team USA at the upcoming Milan Olympic Games.

In addition to Naumov, Ilia Malinin and Andrew Torgashev also secured spots on the men’s team.

At the team announcement event in St. Louis on Sunday, Jan. 11, Naumov shared his excitement about heading to his first Olympics. “We did it! God is good. Every day, year after year, we talked about the Olympics. It means so much in our family, and it’s what I’ve been thinking about since I’m 5 years old. … So I can’t say into words how much this means to me.”

He also reflected on what his parents would think of his accomplishment. “I really hope that my mom watched because she never used to watch me skate. But they say we’re proud of you, but job’s not finished, we’re just getting started,” he said.

Maxim Naumov in Kansas on Jan. 26, 2025.

Matthew Stockman/Getty

Three days before he was named to the team, Naumov skated his short program and broke down in tears as he got his score, while holding up a photo of himself as a 3-year-old boy standing alongside his parents.

“Sharing the vulnerability with the audience and me feeling their energy back has been something I remember for the rest of my life,” he told reporters.

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Naumov lost his parents, who also served as his coaches, on Jan. 29 when American Airlines flight 5342 collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, D.C. Of the 67 lives that were lost, 28 were members of the figure skating community.

Multiple skaters, along with Naumov’s parents, had been heading back to D.C. after attending the U.S. Figure Skating National Development Camp in Wichita, Kansas. Naumov had also been in Wichita and finished fourth in the senior men’s competition at the U.S. National Championships on Jan. 26, just days before his parents’ death.

After the crash, Ekaterina “Katia” Gordeeva, a Russian teammate of Zhenya and Vadium Naumov at the 1994 Olympics and friend of the couple, told PEOPLE a family friend was by Maxim’s side “24 hours” of the day. Katia said the family friend supporting him “is like a godmother to him, and she is with him right now there and her husband.”

Zhenya and Vadim competed alongside Katia and her late husband Sergei Grinkov at the 1994 Olympics, where they finished in fourth place. They wed in 1995 and retired in 1998 to skate professionally while moving to Simsbury, where they would eventually welcome their son.

For a time after their deaths, Naumov questioned if he would bother trying to make the Olympic team at all. But he came back around, largely because of what it meant to his parents.

“It’s the ultimate goal,” Naumov said Thursday, according to the Associated Press. “It’s what my parents and I — one of our last conversations was about exactly that, and you know, it would mean the world to me to do that. So that’s what we’re fighting for.”