A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness -John Keats
Evgenia “Genia” Shishkova (12/18/72-1/29/25) and Vadim Naumov (4/7/69-1/29/25), both born in what was then Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg, Russia, were among the 60 passengers and four crew on board American Airlines 5342 when it collided with a U.S. Army helicopter, exploded on impact and plunged into the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport. Their son, Maxim “Max” Naumov, fourth in the U.S. senior men’s division for three years running, survives.
The couple, who married in the summer of 1995, won the 1994 world pair title. For nearly three decades, they lived and taught figure skating in Connecticut and Massachusetts. They, along with their students Jinna Han, 13, and Spencer Lane, 16, had participated in U.S. Figure Skating’s National Development Camp held in Wichita, Kansas following the 2025 U.S. Championships.
Just three days before their deaths, Max — who always seems to save his best performances for nationals — pulled up from seventh after the short program in Wichita to fourth overall with a solid free skate including two triple Axels. The couple’s last public words are forever memorialized on Instagram:
“Once again, Maxim made us all proud, getting on to the podium at Nationals after 7th place in the short. This beautiful and emotional performance is a result of a team work. Huge thanks to Serhii and Irina Vaypan and of course to Adam Blake for his wonderful choreography of a classic! Maxim has earned his place in the team of 4 Continents.”
I’m glad Genia and Vadim were able to reach out to Max one final time. In 30 years of attending the U.S. Championships, most often as a member of the media, the purest, most joyful reaction from a skater and coach I ever witnessed was Max and Vadim embracing after they learned he had won the 2017 men’s novice title.
Fitting, too, that Genia and Vadim included their colleagues at Skating Club of Boston. Raised in the Saint Petersburg style with a career-long coach, Lyudmila Velikova, they prized artistic and technical contributions from others. By all accounts, they were strict and disciplined with students, but also giving and kind.
“(They) just had a really profound impact on the club,” Blake told WCVB5 in Boston. “Not only that, they were just really, really wonderful people …. With as much work they put in as athletes to become world champions, they put in just as much work to inspire young athletes of the future.”
After news of the crash hit the internet late on Wednesday and a friend confirmed that Shishkova and Naumov were aboard the doomed flight, I spent half the night revisiting their competitive career on YouTube. Judging from the many posts grieving their loss and reaching out to Max, I had a lot of company.
There was so much to appreciate: their quick, light movements. Inventive lifts, including one with a flip-up entrance. Uncanny unison in side-by-side spins. Superb spiral sequences, then a required element in the pairs’ short program. And, of course, what Canadian commentators called “that Russian speed.”
“Doesn’t (Shishkova) remind you of Ludmila Belousova Protopopov?” Dick Button said during their free skate at the 1996 world championships in Edmonton, Alberta, comparing Genia to the elegant two-time Olympic pairs champion. “Petite, gentle, quiet, very blonde, very stretched.”
Skating to classics including Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus and Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, with choreography straight out of the Mariinsky Ballet, rarely was either skater caught in anything less than impeccable position. Naumov treated his partner with sensitivity and respect, lifting her with ease and setting her down gently.
But for all of their success, which included three national titles, five European Championship medals and a win at the 1995/96 ISU Champions Series Final, Shishkova and Naumov were unlucky and, I think, under appreciated.
After placing fifth at the 1992 Albertville Olympics, it was expected they would ascend to the top of the Russian pairs’ ladder and compete for Olympic gold in Lillehammer in 1994. Instead, two all-time great pairs – the supremely romantic Katia Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, and the flamboyant Natalia Mishkutionok and Artur Dmitriev – reinstated, and took gold and silver at those Games. Shishkova and Naumov were edged out for bronze, losing a 5-4 judges’ split to Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler of Canada.
At the 1996 World Championships in Edmonton, Alberta, the pair sat third entering the free after Shishkova fell on a triple toe loop in the short. They sparkled in their free skate to Minkus’ Don Quixote, flying around the ice, their only flaw being a two-footed and under-rotated triple toe from Shishkova. When the nine judges’ marks were tallied, they had four first-place ordinals, plus a third place and four fourth places. Two teams ahead of them also had errors, but somehow, Shishkova and Naumov placed fourth, off of the podium.
I still remember the confused gasps from the knowledgeable Edmonton crowd when the placements flashed up on the jumbotron. On the ABC broadcast Button was as puzzled as everyone else, saying, “Oh! I thought, with that one exception, they were a rather brilliant pair.”
After that, their career lost steam. The following season, they placed fifth at the European Championships, off of the podium for the first time. In 1998, they were not selected for Russia’s European or Olympic team, and they retired from competition.
In the 1990’s aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, opportunities in their hometown of Saint Petersburg were scarce. They settled into coaching jobs at the International Skating Center in Simsbury, Connecticut, where Naumov was director of figure skating from 2011-2016. Among their students was future U.S. and world pairs champion Alexa Knierim, whom they introduced to the pairs discipline in 2010.
“They made a positive impact on me as well as everyone in the skating world,” Knierim told Chicago ABC7. “Everybody adored them. They were a very kind loving couple.”
In 2017, they moved to Skating Club of Boston, where they continued to inspire and teach the next generation of U.S. figure skaters. Their skill was evident in the rapid ascension of Lane, who began skating just three years ago and was already intermediate men’s champion of the Eastern section.
“He had all of his triples, and not just that, but this natural grace and beauty and understanding of ice and speed and his positions were just so gorgeous,” Ellen Schran, a choreographer and daughter of 1956 Olympic champion Tenley Albright, told reporters.
By melancholy coincidence, Skating Club of Boston lost five skaters, plus several coaches, officials and family members, in the 1961 crash of Sabena Flight 548 on its way to the world championships in Prague. The club’s magnificent facility in Norwood features a permanent memorial to those souls. Doug Zeghibe, CEO and executive director of SCOB, said Shishkova and Naumov, as well as Lane, Han and their mothers Christine Lane and Jin Han, who also perished, will be similarly honored.
“Skating is a very close and tight knit community,” Zeghibe told Boston.com. “These kids and their parents, they’re here at our facility in Norwood six, sometimes seven days a week. It’s a close, tight bond. And I think for all of us, we have lost family.”
Button, the two-time Olympic champion and longtime dean of figure skating commentary, also died on or about January 29 th at age 95. I like to imagine that, as Genia and Vadim ascended to paradise hand-in-hand, Button was nearby, saying, “Oh, that judging in Edmonton was absolutely unnecessary and uncalled for. Really second-rate. You should have won.”