Irina Kotikhina

Irina Viktorovna Kotichina (Russian Ирина Викторовна Котихина; born December 17, 1980 in Gorky ) is a Russian table tennis player. She occasionally plays in the German Bundesliga and won bronze at the European Championships in 2007.

Career

As an eight year old Kotichina began playing table tennis. She was defensive player. In European Youth Championships, she won the title in 1995 and 1998 with the Russian team, in 1995 it reached even in a double with Natalia Lapteva the final.

In 1998, she left the club Nitel Novgorod and moved to German Bundesliga Red-White - Klettham Erding. In the following season 1999/2000 she played for Team Galaxy Lübeck, then for the TTFC Burgwedel. Later she returned to Russia and achieved national success Nizhny Novgorod.

In 1999 she married and became a mother in late 2003. Since her husband was away on business often left her parenting less time to train compared to other table tennis professionals.

2007 European Championship

The European Championship 2007 was the first major tournament, where she performed internationally reappear. Therefore, professionals were surprised that she was second with the team and won the bronze medal in the individual. With victories over Mie Skov (Denmark), Ekaterina Ntoulaki (Greece ), Li Qianbing ( Austria ) and Nicole Struse ( Germany ), she reached the semi-finals. Here she succumbed to the eventual champion Li Jiao (Netherlands).

Other international appearances

At the European Championships in 2008, she came in a double quarter-finals. So far, it took four times at world championships, namely 2001, 2006, 2007 and 2008. Too, at the Olympic Games in 2008, was on display.

Currently ( June 2009), she is ranked 90 in the ITTF World Ranking. Your best placing since 2000 was ranked 69 (June 2007, February and March 2008).

Results from the ITTF database