Meet the quartet of US Olympic figure skaters whose parents were ex-Soviet skating superstars
One would think that given all the success Marina Klimova enjoyed in high-stakes, international figure skating with her husband and pairs partner, Sergei Ponomarenko, she would have no trouble watching her son when he takes the ice.
The couple won three world championships, after all. An Olympic medal of each color over three consecutive Winter Games.
Turns out that’s hardly the case.
“My mom gets really stressed,” said Anthony Ponomarenko, part of the powerful U.S. Figure Skating team attempting to set records at the Milan Cortina Olympics. “I called my dad after nationals. I was like, ‘Hey, how are you guys? How are you doing?’ And my dad was like, ‘I didn’t get to watch you. Your mom fainted when she was watching.’ So, yeah.”
Fainting over the U.S. championships?
Imagine how stressed she’ll be during the Winter Games.
The younger Ponomarenko, who is teammates with Christina Carreira in ice dancing, is among four Americans whose parents were elite skaters in the former Soviet Union, and who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s to begin their post-competition lives.
They include Ilia Malinin, the two-time reigning world champion and overwhelming favorite for gold, who was making his Olympic debut Saturday night as part of the team competition for the defending gold medalists. The others are Andrew Torgashev and Maxim Naumov, whose parents were killed when their American Airlines flight collided with a military helicopter last year.
Klimova and Ponomarenko are the most decorated of the bunch, though. Before resettling in California, the couple earned the bronze medal at the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics, silver four years later in Calgary, and a gold medal at the 1992 Games in Albertville, France.
“I mean, second generation Olympic family speaks for itself,” said Anthony Ponomarenko, who was born in San Jose. “I’m sure my parents have a lot of stories, but they’re very superstitious. So all year long, they didn’t tell me any stories about the Games.”
They also didn’t want their son to be a figure skater.
“They wanted me to see the world, explore different avenues,” Ponomarenko explained. “I went into gymnastics, swimming. I did play a little hockey, but my dad said, ‘We have to take care of your face.’ So in the back of their minds, ever since they saw me like a windup toy when they put me on the ice, I think they knew I’d be a figure skater.”
It was never much of a question for Malinin, one of the biggest stars of this year’s Winter Games.
His mother, Tatiana Malinina, finished eighth at the 1998 Nagano Olympics while his father, Roman Skorniakov, was 19th at both the 1998 Games and the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. The two singles skaters, who had competed for Uzbekistan, settled in Northern Virginia after getting married, and now they coach Malinin and others at SkateQuest just outside of Washington, D.C.
Skorniakov often shows up to watch his son compete. Malinina is another matter.
“The real reason,” Malinin explained, “is that I get nervous when she comes. Not because of her, but because I get more nervous for her getting nervous for me than the skating itself. But she gives me a lot of advice, even if she doesn’t come to competitions.”
Surely, the Olympics will be an exception?
“I have a pretty easy answer: I think that’s a ‘No,’” Malinin said.
Naumov’s parents, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, were among 67 people killed last year in that horrific plane crash over the icy Potomac River. The couple had been coaching in the Boston area, but before that, they had been pairs skaters who finished fifth at the 1992 Olympics and fourth at the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway.
“My dad was always there when it was difficult,” Maxim Naumov said. “Good skate or bad skate, he was there, giving me a hug, telling me how proud he was of me. It’s always been like that, and I know that’s exactly what he would be saying right now.”
Torgashev’s parents never competed in the Olympics, though Ilona Melnichenko and Artem Torgashev were capable of it. She was a former world junior ice dance champion while he was a two-time junior world medalist in the pairs event.
Yet the fact that they never made it to the Winter Games may be one of the reasons that their son did.
“Ever since I was a young kid,” Andrew Torgashev said, “I wanted to be the one out of my family that did it. Because I know my mom has lots of regrets that she stopped, and if she just hung on and skated longer, she also would have called herself an Olympian.
“It doesn’t take away from the things that they were able to do in their sport. The Soviet Union was super competitive. Maybe if it was a little later and the Soviet Union disbanded, they would have gone. But I always wanted to be the one from my family that went.”
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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics