After Trump withdrew from sponsoring the event, DuPont became the primary sponsor. This made the race the highest ranked outside of Europe and the first North American stage race to be ranked 2.1. The 1996 race was the subject of a number of legal issues, including a dispute over rights to its profits between the race owners, Billy Packer and president of the
United States Cycling Federation Mike Plant, which resulted in them suing each other. DuPont itself was involved in a dispute about the anti-homosexual employment policies of the local government in
Greenville, South Carolina, with the company insisting that the race organizers exclude the city from the route. After 1996, DuPont dropped its sponsorship and the race has not been run since. During its six years as the Tour DuPont, the race was won by Dutch rider
Erik Breukink, Greg LeMond, Raúl Alcalá, Russian
Viatcheslav Ekimov, and twice by Lance Armstrong. Over this time, a prologue time trial held in Wilmington, Delaware, became the traditional start to the race. Between 1992 and 1994, the race included a stage from
Port Deposit and
Hagerstown in
Maryland, but in 1995, South Carolina was included on the route for the first time in its place. Every edition of the Tour DuPont visited Richmond, Virginia. In 1992, American Greg LeMond won the overall classification. It was the last major win of his career, although he competed in the race again in 1994. In 1994, Alcalá and Armstrong returned to the race as teammates, both riding for
Motorola. The race took place over 11 stages, covering . That year, Ekimov won the overall title, with Armstrong finishing second again. Armstrong finally won the overall classification of the Tour DuPont in 1995, when the race was held over , despite losing more than two minutes to Ekimov on the final-stage time trial. The final edition of the race, held in 1996, was also won by Armstrong, who became the first and only rider to win two editions of the event back-to-back. The French rider
Pascal Hervé, of the
Festina cycling team, was second. The total prize money for the 1996 race was in excess of US$260,000. In July 1996, DuPont announced that it was ending its sponsorship of the race. According to a brand manager for the company, "Over the past six years, the Tour DuPont has been an excellent vehicle for promoting our products. However, we need to focus more on strategic markets in other parts of the world, where a sustained annual program versus a two-week event can better leverage the DuPont brand equity for profitable growth". Race organizer Mike Plant explained that "I talked to them a couple of months ago, and they had to make a hard decision. They don't have hundreds of millions of dollars to put into worldwide advertising. They put a ton of money into this event and they built up a valuable franchise, but, like Motorola, corporations change the way they do business". Plant reported that polling had shown that public recognition of the event had grown significantly, but also that awareness of who sponsored it had declined. Historian Eric Reed notes that a DuPont marketing executive characterized the initial sponsorship as "a bargain", and that the company claimed that the American press clippings generated by the event weighed . DuPont executives also reported that they valued the global media exposure as worth close to US$70 million. Reed quotes a DuPont marketing executive as stating: "In 40 years in [media relations], I have never seen such concentrated, sustained and positive media coverage". However, Reed argues that despite this initial enthusiasm, "the Tour DuPont's chronic weaknesses hamstrung the event's growth", citing its "
pro-am" status, which prevented professional riders from being able to win world ranking points in the event. He also states that despite having an estimated worldwide television audience of 200 million, "American fan enthusiasm and roadside spectator interest in the event failed to spike significantly". DuPont's withdrawal also came months after
John DuPont, heir to the
Du Pont family fortune, had been arrested for the murder of Olympic wrestler
Dave Schultz. At the time of the announcement of DuPont's discontinuation of sponsorship, Mike Plant reported that a 1997 event was tentatively scheduled for May 1–11, and that he had been in discussions with ten companies about potential title sponsorship of the race. ==Past winners==