Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, the veteran Russian ice skating pair who triumphed at the 1994 World Figure Championships and went on to a professional coaching career in the United States, were among the passengers who died on a plane that crashed in Washington, D.C.
Naumov, 55, and Shishkova, 52, were among 64 people on board a regional jet that was flying from Wichita, Kansas, to the U.S. capital on January 29 when it collided in mid-air with a U.S. Army helicopter.
The Boston Skating Club confirmed the two were among six of its members on board the plane. Washington Fire Department officials said no one on the American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas, to Washington survived the accident.
Born in Leningrad in 1969, Naumov was first encouraged to pair up with Shishkova in 1985 after his original skating partner fell ill. The pair began competing together full time two years later. Shishkova also began skating at an early age.
Together, Naumov and Shishkova climbed steadily to the top rungs of the amateur skating world, netting top-five finishes at the World Championships in 1991 and the 1992 Albertville Olympics and silver and bronze medals at the European Championships in the early 1990s.
The following year, they won bronze at the World Championships in Prague and then triumphed in 1994 in Chiba, Japan. They were married in 1995 in Russia.
The duo failed to make the Russian Olympic team for the 1998 Winter Olympics, and they retired from amateur competition to skate and coach professionally.
In 1998, they moved to United States to Simsbury, Connecticut, to coach at the International Skating Center there.
"They were never Olympic champions, but they’re equal in accomplishment to all the Russian pairs," Bob Young, the center's president, said in an interview with the Hartford Courant in 1998.
The pair coached a number of skaters in the United States over the years. Their son, Maxim, born in 2001, has competed for the U.S. national team and was named an alternate for the 2025 U.S. team following the U.S. championships that concluded in Kansas on January 26.
He placed fourth in the men's competition to receive the alternate designation. He was not on the flight from Wichita to Washington.
