Come September, Italian Massimo Constantini will reunite with the Indian table tennis team by taking over as the chief coach.
Constantini, presently head coach of the US team for the Rio Olympics, was India’s chief coach from early 2009 till the end of the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
Under Constantini’s supervision, India finished the Games with five medals, including a gold and silver.
Table Tennis Federation of India secretary-general Dhanraj Choudhary said the opinion of the top Indian players tilted the scales in favour of the 58-year-old.
“Our players were looking for a coach with whom they could find a certain comfort level. So we decided to look at some of those whom we had already hired once. We discussed coaches like Aleksey Yefremov (Belarus), Benone Cristian Grigore (Sweden) and Hubert Hustche (France).”
All these coaches, by turn, served as India’s chief coach, in the past 12 years.
In 2004-2005, Hustche was hired by the TTFI. In 2005, Grigore took over from Hustche and continued till the end of the 2006 season.
Yefremov was in charge during 2007-2008.
Sharath Kamal, who, along with Subhajit Saha, won the men’s doubles gold medal in the 2010 Commonwealth Games when Constantini was the coach, said, “He is a great guy to work with. He has the experience and knows us all very well.
“As a result, he won’t need time to get used to our players and our system.”
Choudhary was keen on having the services of Constantini till the end of the 2020 Olympic Games. “His first major goal will be to prepare the team for the next Asian Games,” he said.
Looking ahead, the TTFI also plans to hire two Korean coaches for training juniors in the country. Choudhary said, “Once the two arrive, we plan to have one of them at Indore, the hub of activity for the juniors.
The other coach will be made available to any state association that wishes to hold camps for the juniors.”
