Timina, Bitzigeio headline UTT coaching line-up for Season 4

MUMBAI: Four-time Olympian Elena Timina and former German women’s team head coach Jorg Bitzigeio will headline the coaching line-up for the upcoming season of the Ultimate Table Tennis (UTT).

The franchise-based league is returning after three years, with Season 4 scheduled to be played from July 13 to 30 in Pune. Each team will have one international and one Indian coach. A coach draft is expected to be held early next month.

Timina, who was also part of the 1994 World Cup-winning Russia team, is a well-known name in the international circuit. She was the coach of the Netherlands women’s team between 2012 and 2017, leading it to two gold and one silver in the 2015 European Games.

Timina had worked with Shaze Challengers and RPSG Mavericks, guiding the former to the runner-up spot in the inaugural edition of the UTT. Bitzigeio, who had represented Germany, also boasts of an impressive coaching CV.

Francisco Santos, Slobodan Grujic, Vesna Ojstersek and Zoltan Batorfi will be the other foreign coaches. A Muralidhara Rao, Anshul Garg, N Ravichandran, Parag Agrawal, Sachin Shetty and Somnath Ghosh will be the Indian coaches.