The Rapha Festive 500 returned for the 11th year in 2020. The challenge remained the same. Ride 500km in the eight days between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.
Different in 2020 was that indoor rides counted towards the 500km target. No doubt in recognition of a) the popularity of online riding platforms like Swift, Rouvy and FulGaz, and b) the various levels of COVID-19 lockdowns around the world.
Also different in 2020 was that Rapha would not send a woven roundel to everyone who completed the challenge. The reward in 2020 is a digital roundel in your Strava Trophy Case.
I assume that Rapha decided to stop sending woven roundels because the numbers of participants have mushroomed over the years. There were 84 participants in 2010. There were 119,206 participants in 2019. The cost of manufacturing and posting increasing numbers of roundels must be prohibitive.
These are the woven roundels that were sent to successful participants from 2011 to 2019.
Come to the 2020 edition of the Festive 500 and Rapha must be glad they stopped sending woven roundels. The inclusion of indoor rides more than doubled the number of participants compared to 2019. There were 240,991 participants in 2020.
This is the digital roundel for 2020.
I am curious to see how many participate in the 2021 Rapha Festive 500. And what the digital roundel looks like.
Old Roots, New Routes 
I have a feeling they knew that numbers would to through the roof this year due to virtual miles being counted, so they put an end to the woven roundel. I wonder what the percentage of finishers were who solely used Zwift to complete the Festive 500 was?
Pingback: 2022 Rapha Festive 500 | Old Roots, New Routes