getting gold with superior bureaucracy
So I'm currently in a side-quest heavy phase of my life and what better side-quest than to obtain the german sports badge? It's an official honorary decoration of Germany, prerequisite qualification for many of our police forces and customs agencies, recognized by the bonus programs of many health insurances and it looks nice on a suit.
It comes in bronze, silver, and gold. It's tested against the four categories endurance, speed, power and coordination. Each category gets you 1-3 points. For bronze you need 4-7 points, but at least passing each category with 1, silver you need 8-10 and gold 11-12. The times in this article are for a man aged 25-29, which is my age bracket. I'll also add german names where appropriate.
To get the sports badge you gotta be able to swim and provide proof of that the first time you do the badge and again every five years. The easiest way by far to do this is to get the german swimming badge at the bronze level, which requires 15 minutes of continuous swimming, covering at least 200 meters, 150 on the stomach and 50 on the back, or the reverse. I did this yesterday, swimming 350 breaststroke and 50 backstroke in those 15 minutes, greatly aided by the buoyancy of being a little fat rn. If you're a serious swimmer you can also do it in gold, which is significantly harder, but is recognized for the endurance category at gold level.
Here, if you're a runner, you can show an official 10k running race time, times in minutes: 66, 59, 52. For in person testing, you most commonly get tested on a 3k run. times: 17:40, 15:40, 13:40. While I know I have at least one reader who can easily hold the 4:33 pace required for a 13:40 on the daily, this is an absurdly fast pace imo. Let's say you drop it back to 15:40, you can have one silver after all, that is still a 5:13 pace. Realistic but far from trivial.
But the endurance category can be gamed via external badges, most notably the running badge by the german athletics club, DLV. For this level 4, 5 and marathon count as gold. 4 requires 90 minutes of continuous running, regardless of pace, 5 requires 120 minutes and marathon is self-explanatory I hope. You could even do the level 3 walking/nordic walking badge, but come on.
100m sprint is the main way here. 16.3 14.8 13.3. I guess load up on creatine and get some nice shoes to shave off 200-300ms, but realistically you either have it in you or you don't. I for one feel confident I can crank out a 13.3 with minimal warmup. Can't game this one.
This one is easy to test and thus you get some variety. I'll recommend 7.26kg shot put (7.50 8.25 8.75) or standing long jump (2.05 2.25 2.45). Can't game this one either.
Thank God high jump exists, imo the most elegant and graceful of athletic disciplines. (1.30 1.40 1.50) But if you're a bit vertically challenged you can do long jump. (4.30 4.60 4.90)
This one can be cheesed to a hilarious degree with the german track and field badge. With that one you do 100m sprint, 7.26kg shot put and long jump and get a score out of that. 800 for bronze, 1100 for silver, 1500 for gold. Bronze being sufficient for recognition as gold in coordination. If you were to get Gold in all 3 for purposes of the sports badge, that amounts to silver in the track and field badge. But for bronze, assuming we keep the golden 13.3s 100m sprint and 8.75m 7.26kg shot put you can get away with a laughable 2.4 meter long jump, less than you gotta do for a gold standing long jump XD.
Important limitation: you may only replace on discipline per calendar year with a recognized federation badge!
If you thought the exploits end here you're wrong. The german sports badge counts your best performance each year in official test conditions. So you can, and probably should, do the first test with Gold in speed and power, maybe coordination depending on your talent or willingness to game the system, and then only do a bronze 3k in a chill 17:40. Then the next time you can keep the legs fresh and only run the 3k to silver and take the sports badge in gold. Or you can ofc take care of the endurance category in advance if you're smart, but I'm not smart so I gotta do it in reverse this year. Well, at least this part is 100% intended.
If you're german or live in germany, the german sports badge is a great way to get a health insurance bonus, a little pin for your suit or in generall check up on your fitness. Getting gold by just straight up doing the 4 disciplines is very possible, but as I outlined, you can get away with less performance if you play the system right. And if you do play the system a little, you get some auxiliary badges too. IRL side-quests / achievement hunting sure is fun.
German Sports Badge Homepage DLV (running badge, track and field badge) DLV track and field badge calculator DLRG (swimming badge)