One of the great imagined histories of life here over the past 30 years is that sport has repeatedly been this tremendous unifying factor and the glue that held society together when everything else was threatening to collapse. At various times and for many different motives, Mary Peters, the 1982 Northern Ireland football team, Denis Taylor and the Ulster rugby side of last year have been presented as reassuring symbols of cross-community togetherness and evidence that maybe things weren't just so bad after all.

The reality, however, was a little more complex than the cosy, unchallenging images that were presented. Any communal celebration or integration that did follow successes like that World Cup run of 1982 or Taylor's World snooker title were invariably short-lived and fleeting. Cut through all the hype and the hoopla of an Olympic gold medal or a European rugby cup and you basically had a society where it was the GAA for one side and soccer and rugby for the other with little room for any common ground in between.

But the reaction to the death of Joey Dunlop in Estonia at the weekend suggests that he was different, a one-off who swam against the prevailing tide. Reactions to his death have been telling. There have been the obvious manifestations of public sympathy like the opening of books of condolence in his home town of Ballymoney. But there was also a rigorously observed minute's silence at Sunday's Ulster football championship replay at Casement Park. Joey Dunlop did not live his life according to the old, established order and so it is fitting that his death should also be remarked in a unique way.

The innate simplicity of motorcycle roadracing - just a man and a machine pitted against the road and the elements - only adds to the elemental sense of shock that Dunlop's death has provoked here. There was a very real sense that his genius protected him in some way from the savage vagaries of his sport.

But Dunlop never appeared to allow his self-belief to cross over into arrogance and that seemed to be his greatest attribute and most potent shield against everything that road-racing could throw at him. Like all the great sporting performers there was a tremendous sense of effortlessness and lightness to what he did.

The television pictures of Dunlop out on the road invariably showed a rider who always seemed to be in total control. That is what makes the pictures of the crash scene on Sunday afternoon just outside Tallin so chilling. The scarred tree into which he crashed, the chassis of the machine lodged in its trunk and the rest of the debris from the shattered bike scattered all around scream out the story of the momentary loss of control that ultimately cost Dunlop his life.

As is so often the case, the bare facts of the life hardly begin to tell the story. Five world championships and 26 wins at the Isle of Man TT reflect a professional career of awesome achievement. But the statistics do not even begin to convey any sense of the man himself or of the personality that endeared him to people who ordinarily would not have expressed even a passing interest in his sport.

Dunlop was a northern sporting celebrity unlike any other in recent times because he eschewed all the usual trappings of success and was not afraid to show his discomfort with that empty world of vacuous fame and fortune. Unlike an Irvine or a Best, Dunlop seemed genuinely most relaxed among his own people and away from the cameras, the microphones, the nightclubs and the public appearances.

Every new success was celebrated privately, shyly and self-consciously in his own bar in Ballymoney with trusted friends and family. He exhibited a total lack of guile and cynicism and people responded enthusiastically to that. Joey Dunlop was one of their own. There was also a playfulness and a knowingness simmering just below the surface. Dunlop was never discourteous to even the most banal of enquiries but every now and again he would respond to one with a brief glint of the eyes and a quizzical glance. Little if anything was ever said but the meaning was never less than clear.

In recent years that is exactly how he greeted talk of slowing down or retirement. There were milestones along the way - most recently the hat-trick of wins that culminated in the 26th TT victory - that might have marked an appropriate full stop to Dunlop's career. But he was such a driven man that the notion of stopping seemed almost heretical. At one point in his career, as he lay in hospital pinned together after another serious crash, he was asked would he now think about stopping. "Sure what else would I do," came the almost plaintive reply.

Joey Dunlop's passing will shake his sport and the brave men who raced alongside him to their core. His brother Robert has already had his brush with death on the Isle of Man a few years ago. Philip McCallen, the man many believed would pick up Joey's mantle, has already retired after surviving a serious accident but emerging with a chronic back injury.

Already the debate about the future of road racing here has been reopened and Dunlop's death has been cited as yet more compelling evidence for those who believe it is a sporting activity that has run its course. The reality is that, while what has happened does not tell us anything that we did not already know about the inherent dangers of road racing, it is a sport that has now been robbed of both its figurehead and its most potent advocate. Without him, survival is by no means assured.

But those are arguments for other, less dark, days. For now, this is a place mourning Joey Dunlop's death and at the same time celebrating his life and all its positives - the skill, the tremendous sense of poise and balance, the verve, the will to win, the humility, the mischievousness, the warmth. Numerous images of his life will endure, but the most potent is that of the modest man walking through the crowd in the pit-lane.

Necks crane anxiously for even a glimpse, but then the sea of people parts as Dunlop gets closer to his machine. He lifts the yellow helmet sitting on the leather saddle, pulls it on and adjusts the visor. For those few seconds he was Joey, just Joey.