On September 8 and 9, the Neandertal Kyudo Club hosted the fifth edition of its friendly competition in traditional Japanese archery. The event also served to celebrate the club’s 10th anniversary. Once again this year, archers from Hamburg to Stuttgart were in attendance.

The Japanese Consulate General in Düsseldorf kindly served as patron of the event. In his welcoming remarks, Consul General Kiyoshi Koinuma highlighted the club’s long-standing efforts to foster German-Japanese friendship. In his speech, Mayor Arno Werner particularly highlighted the remarkable athletic achievements—both nationally and internationally—of this still relatively young club.

Afterward, seven teams of three shooters each began their competition. A unique feature of the Rheingold Taikai is that each team has three targets of different sizes at their disposal: the standard diameter of 36 cm, 30 cm, and 24 cm. After five rounds, the top three teams were determined: Karin Reich (Hamburg), Uta Scholten (Neandertal), and Volker Bruckmann (Neandertal) took third place with 20 hits. Beate Dorst (Frankfurt/Main), Yuri Hirayanagi (Neandertal), and Michael Lehmann (Frankfurt/Main) took second place with just one more hit. By a wide margin (30 hits), the mixed team led by Michael Bretschneider (Karlsruhe), President of the German Kyudo Federation, along with Peter Knipper (Möhnesee) and Peter Kollotzek (Detmold), took the top spot.

Twenty-eight kyudoka competed in the individual competition on Sunday. The spectators—who were once again delightfully numerous on the second day—witnessed an exciting, high-level competition. In the round of the final six, three archers prevailed with four out of four hits, leaving Günther Dauner (Neandertal), Thoralf Schuchardt (Stuttgart), and Christoph Wallrafen (Neandertal) had only to shoot for placement in the final round.

Dauner sealed his victory with his first shot. Schuchardt and Wallrafen didn’t hit the target until their second arrow, so they had to shoot again to determine second and third place. Christoph Wallrafen’s arrow ended up closer to the center of the mato, allowing the host club to claim a one-on-one double victory.

Before the awards ceremony, the well-known group Tentekko Taiko once again fired up the audience with Japanese drum rhythms. Even though Kyudo tends to be a more subdued sport, both traditional arts demand full physical commitment.

Automatically translated by DeepL