‘Special Forces’: Maxim Naumov Recalls Last Conversation With His Parents

Maxim Naumov dealt with an unthinkable tragedy in January 2025 when both of his parents were killed in a plane crash. Just over a year later, he competed in the 2026 Winter Olympics, and now, he’s putting himself to the utmost physical and emotional test on Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test.

On the October 8 episode, Naumov was called into tactical questioning with the Directing Staff (DS). Earlier in the day, he sacrificed himself in a boxing task by agreeing to fight professional boxer Alycia Baumgardner. When Jason “Foxy” Fox asked him why he volunteered he explained, “Nobody raised their hand, and I just decided to step up. I take the hits so they didn’t have to.”

Foxy told Naumov that he seems to be “very laser beam focused,” which the figure skater credits his parents for. “They were two-time Olympians and world champions,” he said. “They raised me to be a champion. I’d give anything to have some more time with them.”

Maxim Naumov/Instagram

It was then that Foxy asked Naumov to dig deep and open up about what happened to his mom and dad. “It was national championships, my mom and dad were both there,” he recalled. “After I finished my competition, I flew back home. My mom calls me and she said, ‘I just want to make sure you know that we’re proud of you. And that we love you.’ And as a Soviet Russian family, we never said ‘I love you’ outright like that. I said, ‘I love you, too,’ and all that. That was it.”

Naumov revealed that he was supposed to pick his parents up from the airport the next day. “I kept texting them, I said, ‘Have you guys landed?’ And all of a sudden I get a call. There was an accident with a helicopter,” he continued, getting emotional. “I haven’t relived that moment in a while. Everybody on board was gone. And that was it. That was f**king it right there. My whole life flipped upside down.”

He admitted that competing in the Olympics one year later was “bittersweet,” adding, “I trained my whole life for it. The only thing I wanted was to hug my dad and hug my mom and tell them I made it.”

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Foxy assured Naumov that he was “doing really well” on the course. “But sometimes when we’re out there, you’re so focused that there’s nothing else,” he warned him. “You’re quite non-emotional. We want to see more of you out there. Have fun at the same time, just add another layer.”

Naumov agreed to try, and in a confessional, he said, “It never gets easier, unfortunately. But it’s what I have trained my whole life to do as an athlete: put my feelings and emotions to the side. But deep down, I am a very emotional person.”

Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, Season 5, Thursdays, 9/8c, Fox