Whereas winners from the U.S. determine skating nationwide championships over the weekend in St. Louis had locked up spots to compete within the Winter Olympics, there nonetheless was drama in Sunday’s announcement of the U.S. Olympic group.
U.S. Determine Skating revealed the 16 athletes to signify the nation on the Milan-Cortina Video games subsequent month in Italy, together with freshly minted males’s nationwide champion Ilia Malinin, first-time Olympian Amber Glenn in girls’s competitors and seven-time nationwide titlists Madison Chock and Evan Bates in ice dance.
Maxim Naumov, who completed third behind Malinin’s dominant efficiency on Saturday, has a legacy within the sport that’s heartbreaking.
His mother and father, who competed for Russia in two Olympics, have been amongst 67 who died in a business airplane crash final Jan. 29 in Washington, D.C.
Matthew Stockman through Getty Pictures
Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, who have been world champions in pairs determine skating in 1994, turned coaches on the Skating Membership of Boston.
They have been getting back from Wichita, Kansas, host of the 2025 U.S. championships, together with 26 others related to determine skating, when their airplane collided with a navy helicopter, killing everybody aboard each plane.
Maxim Naumov, a 24-year-old from Simsbury, Conn., stated he talked together with his mother and father on a regular basis about him following them as an Olympian.
On Sunday, he was knowledgeable he made the U.S. group.
“I might not be sitting right here with out the unimaginable work effort and love from my mother and father,” Naumov stated in a information convention on Sunday. “It means completely every little thing to me, fulfilling the dream that we collectively had as a household since I first was on the ice at 5 years previous. So it means completely every little thing. And I do know they’re trying down, smiling and proud.”
He’ll compete in males’s singles with Malinin, a 21-year-old from Fairfax, Va., who received his fourth consecutive title and will probably be making his Olympic debut, and Andrew Torgashev, 24, who positioned second at nationals.
Glenn, 26, who received her third straight nationwide title, is joined by teammates Alysa Liu, 20, the reigning world champion, and Isabeau Levito, 18, the 2023 nationwide champion.
The married couple of Chock, 33, and Bates, 36, have received 5 straight nationwide titles and 7 general, a file. They’ve competed in three earlier Olympics collectively, not having medaled as a duo however incomes gold within the group occasion in 2022 at Beijing.
They’re joined by the ice dance groups of Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik, and Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarkenko.
The pairs groups are Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea, and Emily Chan and Spencer Howe. The drama got here with the exclusion of two-time reigning U.S. titlists Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov. Efimova was born in Finland and was attempting to get her U.S. citizenship permitted earlier than Sunday’s choice deadline so she may compete within the Olympics. The Membership of Boston, their dwelling coaching base, tried to assist her and enlisted the help of U.S. senators however the deadline handed.
Kam and O’Shea received silver at nationals, and Chan and Howe positioned fourth. The third-place pairs group, Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman, additionally was not thought of for the Olympic group as a result of Parkman was born in Russia and doesn’t have a U.S. passport.
The 2026 Winter Video games are Feb. 6-22 in Milan and Cortina, Italy.
