Maxim Naumov’s grief story collides with “Ilia Malinin parents plane crash” rumor

A surge of online searches tying Ilia Malinin’s parents to a plane crash is colliding with a real, still-raw tragedy in U.S. figure skating: Olympian Maxim Naumov’s parents, his lifelong coaches, were killed in a mid-air collision on Jan. 29, 2025 (ET) near Washington, D.C. With the Milano Cortina Games underway in February 2026, that overlap has blurred two very different stories—one documented loss and one claim that is not supported by official information.

What happened to Maxim Naumov’s parents

Maxim Naumov, 24, is making his Olympic debut at Milano Cortina 2026 after qualifying for Team USA at the 2026 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. His path to the Games has been shaped by the death of his parents, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who were former world champion pairs skaters and later became coaches in the United States.

They died on Jan. 29, 2025 (ET) in a collision involving a commercial flight and a military helicopter near the Potomac River area. The crash killed everyone aboard the aircraft involved and sent shock waves through the figure skating community, which had multiple athletes, parents, and coaches connected to the sport among the victims.

For Maxim, the timing has been brutal and symbolic: the one-year mark of that crash fell during the final push of the Olympic season, turning major competitions into both performance tests and public moments of remembrance.

Why Maxim Naumov became a focal point at the Olympics

Naumov’s story has resonated because the loss was not only personal—his parents were also his entire coaching team and day-to-day support system. After the crash, he stepped away from skating for a period, then returned under the guidance of longtime family friends and coaches in the U.S. skating network.

At national events this season, he has used understated tributes—photos, short gestures, and remarks about feeling his parents’ presence—to mark their role in his career. That combination of elite performance and visible grief has made him a central figure in broader coverage about the crash’s aftermath and how the U.S. program has coped.

Where the Ilia Malinin rumor comes in

The phrase “Ilia Malinin parents plane crash” has circulated in search trends and social posts, often without context. The problem is that it conflates two separate realities:

• A widely documented 2025 aviation tragedy that killed multiple people connected to figure skating, including Maxim Naumov’s parents.

• A claim that Ilia Malinin’s parents died in that crash, which does not match public records, athlete biographies, or recent official profiles of Malinin.

This is a common pattern during big events: one high-profile story spreads, then search algorithms and reposts attach it to other famous names in the same sport. In this case, Malinin’s prominence at Milano Cortina—where he is one of the most recognizable U.S. skaters—appears to have made him an easy target for mistaken association.

Who Ilia Malinin’s parents are, and what’s actually confirmed

Ilia Malinin, 21, is coached by his parents, Tatiana Malinina and Roman Skorniakov—both former Olympic-level skaters who competed internationally before settling in the United States. They have been referenced repeatedly in recent Olympic coverage as active in his training and day-to-day coaching environment.

There is no official confirmation of any incident involving Malinin’s parents in a plane crash. Recent biographical coverage continues to describe them as living, coaching, and involved in his career planning around the 2026 Games.

Why this matters beyond gossip

The confusion is not harmless. It has two concrete effects:

1. It misdirects attention from the families who actually experienced the loss. For people mourning the victims of the 2025 crash, inaccurate viral claims can feel like an erasure of what happened and to whom.

2. It distorts how the sport’s story is understood at the Olympics. Milano Cortina already carries a heavy emotional layer for U.S. skating, with athletes competing while remembering teammates, coaches, and parents. Mixing up identities muddles that reality and can spread falsehoods at scale.

As the Games continue, the on-ice spotlight will keep moving—toward medals, performances, and the pressure of Olympic judging. But the background story in U.S. figure skating remains the same: one athlete, Maxim Naumov, is skating through a verified tragedy, while another, Ilia Malinin, is dealing with an unrelated rumor that doesn’t align with the public record.

Sources consulted: Reuters, Time, International Olympic Committee, ESPN