I noticed that when you get a gold medal in time trial, some of those medals had 2 white sparkles and some didn't. First I thought this was maybe a bug in the game but I later realized that you get the 2 sparkles when you go throuhg the level without taking any damage.

So my next goal is to have them all gold and sparkling.

It's not about not taking damage. It's actually about being even much faster than the requirement for the gold level. The Shiny golden medal is a semi-hidden feature for the ppl that really want to take the Time trials seriously.

One Example: 5-3: Flutter Flyaway, a level with many flying platform cycles that can be skipped with good movement. The Golden Medal requires a time below 1 Minute 49 sec. That time can barely be achieved when you stick to the moving platform cycles. For a shiny golden medal, you need a time below 1 minute and 8 seconds - 41 seconds faster. For that time you need to actually skip most of the moving platform cycles.

The shiny golden medal feature shows very good, how the devs had the time trials in their mind when designing the levels. That's why I think it's a very good game for speedruns in general, because it was built in a way that you can go really fast most of the time.

By the way, all shiny gold times are listed here, have fun trying to get them: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/wii/997764-donkey-kong-country-returns/faqs/62787

thanks for the info mr tiger. I ll try to get as many as I can.