This has been something of a flashback for me. The first Abu Dhabi Tour … the first Redlands Bicycle Classic. What do they have in common? Two-wheel bikes, whippet lean men, strange terminology and the same sports editor covering each debut, albeit 30 years apart.

Abu Dhabi being Abu Dhabi, it started its bike race at a much higher level of competition than did little Redlands, in 1985, and with a professional crew of Italians to run the event — fours stages in four days.

Abu Dhabi also brought in 106 riders and 18 teams ranging from competitive to formidable and among the riders was one of the six men who has won each of the Grand Tours (Vincenzo Nibali) and the current Vuelta a Espana champion (Fabio Aru) and the recent winner of the UCI World Road Race Championship (Peter Sagan). Among other guys with impressive resumes.

And today, I got up-close-and-personal with the bikes and riders, and with the surprise winner of a dramatic mountain stage.

Cycling tours have become a “thing” in this part of the world. Oman has one. Doha has one. Dubai has done one this year and last. Now Abu Dhabi.

Four major Abu Dhabi governmental entities got behind the event, each becoming the sponsor of one of the four jerseys (red, black, white, green, the colors of the UAE flag) that would be worn by riders during the tour.

The National, which is owned by Abu Dhabi Media, took charge of awarding the white jersey to “best young rider” after each stage. That included Stage 3 today, the Al Ain stage, which ended with an almost certainly decisive (overall) climb up Jebel Hafeet which I mentioned on this blog a few days ago.

As sports editor, I was nominated to make the white-jersey award at the finish line furthest from Abu Dhabi, in the process becoming the first guy not in a kandura to hand over a jersey.

The drive to Al Ain is about two hours, certainly when you tack on the climb to the top of the mountain (about 4,000 feet in altitude).

And I not only experienced anew what it is like behind the scenes of a bike race, I also happaned upon a particularly dramatic finish, perhaps the most dramatic I have known — given that a guy about 20 yards from winning the stage fell over (see the photo, above), losing a chance to win the stage as well as the race.

A half-hour earlier, it was decided I should be a bit more formal than “cargo pants and golf shirt” and shifted to the “khakis, button-down shirt, panama hat” I had brought along, in case of a change of heart.

Then we caught a ride from a couple of the Italian organizers from the Mercure hotel perched on the mountainside to the summit of the hill.

After a few minutes in the hospitality tent, those of us who were going to be handing out jerseys were led to an area next to the podium, and instructed on what to do: Follow the Etihad Airways hostess up the stairs to the podium, wait for the shirt winner to come up and stand on the top step, take the shirt from the hostess, hand it to the rider, receive a bouquet of roses, hand that to the rider … and smile.

Meantime, the race got weird.

The climb up the hill was intended to break up the pack and determine an overall winner, and it did that.

A little guy from Colombia, Esteban Chaves, led most of the way up the hill, but then a journeyman from the Netherlands named Wouter Poels made a huge push, and he took the lead on the final rise of the climb and was seconds away from perhaps the biggest moment of his career.

But he came in too hot at the final turn, a tight 180-degree turn just ahead of the finish, and he tipped over about halfway into the turn. Someone whispered “tire gave way”; some suggested he had tilted over so far that his pedal struck the road; but mostly he was just going too fast in too tight a turn. Mona Al Marzooqi  of The National shot the photo above.

The Chaves kid he had passed moments before zipped past Poels, who was trying to drag himself and his bike over the line, and Aru got in there, too, making Poels third.

It was compelling stuff, though I felt bad for Poels.

Chaves was suitably modest about his huge break after his great ride, and I made the TV appearance (telecast live on Abu Dhabi Sports 1) on the podium, trying to figure out what I was supposed to be looking at (the crowd? the hostess? the rider?) after handing over shirt and flowers, and feeling silly and awkward. Perhaps the panama hat distracted them.

I never awarded a jersey in all the years I covered the Redlands Bicycle Classic, nor was it ever televised live. So that all was new and different.

Later tonight, I saw what a fantastic photo one of our staffers (Mona Al Marzooqi) had gotten of Poels skidding back into anonymity at the end of the race, and it just felt like something semi-important, anyway.

So, that’s two bike tour debuts. This one cost way, way, way more than the 1985 Redlands Classic, the brainchild of mayor Carole Beswick, inspired by the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics road race, and that Redlands event was run on a shoestring.

But the Abu Dhabi Tour had the advantage of modern technology, including the live TV, and the event turned into a rolling, four-day picture postcard for the UAE capital, as the course managed to zip past many of the biggest landmarks of the city.

Redlands back then didn’t have that many landmarks, and hardly does now, and nothing like a camera in a helicopter overhead to make an orange grove look particularly lush.

Thus, it costs a lot more than it once did to stage a race, but the rewards might be worth the outlay. Check back in another 30 years, and maybe I will be able to relate whether the return for the host city has become even bigger.