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.

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.

[4][5] After winning the transatlantic race, the Flyer crew found their greatest rival to be another Swan 65, the sloop rigged British yacht King's Legend, with Nick Ratcliffe as the skipper and American Skip Novak as the navigator.

On the second leg to Auckland, New Zealand, King's Legend stole the upper hand, and soon had a 360mile lead over Flyer as the Whitbread fleet raced across the Southern Ocean, but then suffered a leak, which slowed her progress.

[6] The third leg around Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro proved something of an anti-climax as far as the race was concerned, for Kings Legend suffered a broach and water wiped out her radio.

On the final leg back to Portsmouth, Van Rietschoten and his crew had only to shadow Kings Legend home which they did, finishing 2 hours behind the British yacht, to win the Whitbread Race on handicap.

Van Rietschoten swore his crew to secrecy, and would not even allow the Flyer II doctor Julian Fuller to call a cardiologist aboard their rival yacht Ceramco for advice.