Rafi’s Race – £3,500 raised for Nicki’s Smile!

Under the gaze of the Mayor of London’s office on the banks of the River Thames the young and the slightly less young gathered early on Sunday morning for the start of Rafi’s Race: a challenge to race around London as fast as possible visiting every square on the London monopoly board.

With cloudy skies offering some protection from the summer sun and only public transport allowed to carry the teams around the city it was helpful that Transport for London did not schedule any engineering work for the day.

The grand depart at 10:00 saw contrasting approaches with some teams running to London Bridge tube whilst others decided that the start was now a good time to begin planning their route around the 30 sites.

On the streets the teams took pictures of London’s landmarks and shared their progress on social media. The competition was fierce and after tales of lost Oyster cards and brunch at Wholefoods it was The Monopolists that emerged from the pack to cross the finishing line first. Comprising Anthony and Dani Goodmaker, Ben Sheldon, Jody Goldman and Ben Levitt the winning team resisted the urge to go shopping in the West End and completed the challenge in a rapid 3 hours 30 minutes.

Interviewed after the race, they attributed their success not just to good planning but also due to tactics such as ‘confusion’ which included getting off the bus to Old Kent Road early and causing other teams, still on the bus, to panic about what shortcut they knew.

Rafi Davis, the inspiration for the event, finished a strong second and was on hand to present the winners with their trophies. On raising £3,500 Rafi commented “I am thrilled with the massive turnout and that the event was such a success. I am pleased that so many people donated to this truly worthy cause.”

The event was all about the taking part and a special mention goes to Xinyue Pan and Manda Belsham who were still smiling after recording a time of 8 hours – their prize of a Monopoly set may have been the last thing they wanted to see!

Special thanks to everyone for taking part, More London and The Horniman pub for providing the start and finish points, Pancreatic Cancer UK for supplying T-shirts and XL Insurance for providing fantastic branded goodie bags – happily the ponchos weren’t needed.