All of Kerry felt the sting of loss when gregarious farmer Michael Gaine disappeared more than six weeks ago, but for the rallying community, his absence is now a gaping wound.
“The best way I could describe it to you is if you can imagine me holding up my hand to you, there’s five digits and one of them is gone now,” said Brian Hickey, a close rallying friend of Mr Gaine’s for decades.
“There’s a piece missing from the five of us that were buddies,” he said, referring to his tight-knit friend group, including Mr Gaine, that formed in Kenmare around the rallying scene.
Friends say Mr Gaine would never have missed a rally, so his absence from one of the racing calendar’s biggest events, the Rally of the Lakes, haunted the sun-kissed tarmac over the bank holiday weekend.
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Doubly so because one of the event’s tracks passes directly in front of his farmyard – the scene of much analysis and investigation in recent times.
The mood at the Gleneagle Hotel in Killarney on Sunday was jovial, the air thick with laughter, car fumes and crackling engines, but Mr Gaine was never far from people’s minds.
“It’s amazing, the weather being the way it is, and yet there’s something in the air,” one spectator remarked, struggling to define the tinge of unease permeating proceedings as the ceremony wrapped.
In all, more than 30,000 petrolheads are understood to have attended over the weekend.
Car after car lined up at the finish ramp, most brandishing stickers with Mr Gaine’s face. The event programme booklet, of which more than 6,000 were sold, also featured the disappearance prominently, urging those present to contact gardaí with any information about his whereabouts.
“A true rally enthusiast ... he is one of our own,” it reads. Despite his absence, Mr Gaine’s face was everywhere at the event, and that was exactly the goal, say rally enthusiasts here.
“I think people had stopped talking about it in a small way. And that’s why we did it. Six weeks on, it needed a kick,” said Mr Hickey.
The response from the public to the campaign had been “phenomenal”, he said, with organisers inundated by callers from well beyond the rally scene looking for stickers for their vehicles.
“It’s our way of paying tribute to him,” he said. “Don’t mind all the searching, don’t mind all the digging that was done. We were all involved in that, but this is our own personal thing.”
It’s personal too for Vincent O’Shea, another member of the five friends who attended rallies together in places such as Spain, Italy and Portugal, sparking Mr Gaine’s love of travel.
Mr O’Shea has known Mr Gaine for more than three decades, and the group – all members of Killarney and District Motor Club (KDMC) – follow World Rally Championship events closely.
“It’s a lot more sombre for us now,” he said from the driver’s seat of his silver Darrian. “There’s a cloud hanging over everything still. Going down Moll’s Gap, the first stage goes past the farm where it all started, and Mike’s wife was there and we were all hooting.
“There’s a ‘beep for Mike’ sticker too so I think all the cars were hooting going down there, because that’s where he’d watch it. He’d be there every event watching them come down.”
As one of the Kenmare contingent, Mr O’Shea’s car is emblazoned with Mr Gaine’s face, with large stickers on the bonnet and roof, and smaller prints scattered around the bodywork.
Speaking from the bonnet of a Ford Escort Mark II, much like the one Mr Gaine rallied in many decades ago, Thomas Randles, chairman of KDMC, and Seán Moriarty, chairman of Kerry Motor Club, said the disappearance had weighed on rally enthusiasts.
“All of the rally community would have felt Mike’s absence in the run up to this event. The community is very tight-knit,” said Mr Moriarty. “We look after each other in the good times and the bad times. And this is an example of the rallying community coming together in the bad times.
“There’s about 10 rally cars from the Kenmare region. Mike showed fierce loyalty to all of them, and they showed fierce loyalty to Mike.
“His disappearance occurred only a handful of days before the Tralee rally, the Circuit of Kerry, and all the Kenmare crews withdrew out of that rally as a mark of respect. So, this time around they felt they had to show solidarity, I suppose, and come back together and carry the stickers.”
“He’s one of these guys that operated in the background ... We’re the guys with the fancy racing car and the photographs at the end of it, but this doesn’t happen without people like Mike.”
On why the rally community continues to broadcast the message of Mr Gaine, Mr Randles said it was down to his love for the sport and showing solidarity with one of their own.
“You need three dimensions in life. Your family, your work and your sport. This was Mike’s sport, and this is our sport.”
