Daniel Petrenko was 3 years old when he saw Maxim Naumov for the first time.
Their first meeting occurred in Hartford Hospital, the day Maxim was born to Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, former Olympic pairs skaters who were coaches at the International Skating Center of Connecticut in Simsbury.
“We went to see Genia when she had Max,” Daniel’s mother Elena Petrenko said last month. “Daniel is three years older. Daniel looked, he had big eyes. This is who he saw first, Daniel.”
Daniel and his younger brother Anton and Maxim grew up together at the skating rink where their parents coached and became close friends.
Now Maxim is going to the Olympics and his best friend Daniel, who is the director of figure skating at the International Skating Center of Connecticut, will be there watching and cheering. Daniel will also be writing a daily diary for The Courant starting Monday.
The Petrenkos – Daniel, Anton and parents Vladimir and Elena – have been a key support system for Maxim throughout the past year, after Naumov’s parents were among 67 people, including more than two dozen figure skaters and parents and coaches returning from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas, to perish in a plane crash in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 29, 2025.
Maxim, 24, was suddenly alone. He is an only child and his parents coached him. He turned to the Petrenkos for support and in July, Vladimir and Elena began to coach Maxim in his bid to make the U.S. Olympic team.
“The three of them (Maxim, Daniel and Anton) are inseparable to this day,” Elena said. “When (the plane crash) happened, Max was here (in Simsbury) every weekend. This is where the comfort zone is. This is where they grew up.”
Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova were at the ribbon cutting of the Simsbury rink in 1994, where international skaters such as Olympic gold medalist Oksana Bauil and Viktor Petrenko – Daniel’s uncle who won a bronze medal at the 1988 Olympics and a gold medal in 1992 – trained and coached in the mid- to late-90s.
Daniel’s parents were good friends with Naumov and Shishkova, former world pairs champions who were coaches at the rink from 1998 to 2017. His father, Vladimir, started coaching at the rink in 1998 and the two families spent a lot of time there when Daniel, Anton and Maxim were growing up.
Even when Maxim and his parents moved to Boston from Simsbury in 2017 so Naumov and Shishkova could coach at the Skating Club of Boston, Daniel and Maxim still talked and texted and played video games together.
Last February, Daniel said this of his friend: “He’s very strong. I think people say this of skaters and professional athletes – you’re kind of built to be this tough person, mentally and physically. You can kind of see that in him, that he’s holding strong. He wasn’t living with his parents but they’re his coaches. Skating is his whole life.”
At the time, Naumov had stopped skating and was trying to take on his parents’ coaching duties. But after enlisting the help of the Petrenkos, he started again and eventually decided in July he would try to qualify for the Olympics.
“Everybody is super excited and happy for him,” Daniel said after Maxim was named to the team in January. “I always think back to when we were kids – being in skating families, respectively – you always have these aspirations of making it to the Olympics. Over the years, I’ve stopped (competing) and other friends have stopped but (Max) has kept going.”
Visit the socials for the International Skating Center of Connecticut and Team Petrenko at:
International Skating Center of Connecticut – Facebook
International Skating Center of Connecticut – Instagram
Team Petrenko – Facebook
Team Petrenko – Instagram