Conny van Rietschoten
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Conny van Rietschoten (1982)
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| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Cornelis van Rietschoten |
| Nickname(s) | The Flying Dutchman |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Born |
26 March 1926 Rotterdam, Netherlands |
| Died | 17 December 2013 (aged 87) Portugal |
Cornelis "Conny" van Rietschoten (23 March 1926 – 17 December 2013) was a Dutch yacht skipper who was the only skipper to win the Whitbread Round the World Race twice.
Born in Rotterdam, van Rietschoten was unknown as a sailor even in his own waters before competing in the 1977-78 Whitbread Round the World Race. At 45, the industrialist had retired from active business and was looking for a fresh challenge. He had read reports about the first Whitbread Race, saw it as the opportunity of a lifetime – and grabbed it with both hands. A circumnavigation was something his Father, Jan Jacob, had always wanted to do but never found the time. The younger Van Rietschoten had in fact been sailing since he was three, and had continued until tuberculosis interrupted both his sailing and business career in the early 1960s. He spent a year convalescing in a Swiss sanatorium, and then threw all his energies into developing the family electrical engineering business, Van Rietschoten & Houwens.
What set Van Rietschoten ahead of the established sailing names like Sir Robin Knox-Johnston and Éric Tabarly was a professional business approach to his campaigns. His eight-year tenure at the top of the sport spelled the end of amateur gung-ho ocean racing entries. He may well have continued to see himself as an amateur, but he set levels of professionalism within the sport that were not repeated until Peter Blake also won every leg with his Steinlager 2 in the 1989–90 Whitbread Round the World Race.
Van Rietschoten was first to undertake extensive trials and crew training before the race, and invested in research to improve crew clothing, rigs and weather forecasting techniques.
For his first Whitbread yacht, Conny van Rietschoten turned to American designers Sparkman & Stephens to design a more modern version of the Swan 65 production yacht Sayula II, which had won the first Whitbread race in 1973/74. The new Flyer, built in aluminium by Jachtwerf W. Huisman, was also a ketch, but with a longer waterline and more sail area.
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