SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Yellowknife friends and admirers of snowmobiling daredevil Darryl Tait are praying for him to pull through after a terrible accident last weekend landed the 19-year-old in hospital.

Darryl Tait recieves his silver medal in the Half pipe competition for snowboarding at the Arctic Winter Games Kenai Alaska.

Tait, a rising star on the extreme snowmobiling sports circuit, was attempting a back flip on a dirt track in a freestyle demonstration at the New Hampshire Grass Drags in Fremont, New Hampshire on Oct. 11 when the snowmobile failed to complete the rotation and both Tait and the machine came crashing to the ground.

"I don't know if the machine quit in the rotation, we haven't gone back to analyze the parts," said his father Jamie Tait on Wednesday from Boston, Mass., where his son was hospitalized.

"The long and short of it is he got a very badly broken back between T-5 and T-6 (vertebrae), and crushed lungs and ribs, shoulder blades. He's not stable enough to go in and stabilize his back yet."

Jamie is the former owner of Summit Air and his family were residents of Yellowknife until early last year. The family has since moved to Atlin, B.C. after living in the city for eight years.

Darryl is well-known to Yellowknife's snowmobiling, dirt bike and snowboarding sports community. He represented the NWT at the Arctic Winter Games in Yellowknife last year as a snowboarder, where he claimed four ulus, including a first-place finish in the Banked Slalom Junior Male category and was the second place snowboarder overall.

He also won a silver ulu for the NWT as a juvenile male for the snowboarding half pipe at the Arctic Winter Games in Kenai, Alaska in 2006.

After hearing about the accident two of his friends from Yellowknife, Logan Andrews and Chris Stapleton, rushed down to Boston to be at his side. Stapleton's mom Kate said Darryl and her son are best friends and went to school together at Range Lake North and Sir John Franklin High School.

"He's an amazing kid, never drank, never got into trouble," said Stapleton.

"He was very athletic with his skiing and his snowboarding. He's very good at what he does."

Extreme snowmobiling enthusiast Ken Pearman described Darryl as a world-class athlete, one whom he competed against many times at snocross events held in Yellowknife.

"He was probably the one of the finest snocrossers who ever raced amongst us for his age group," said Pearman.

"He's a very talented rider, he could've gone a long ways – an absolute sportsman."

Snocross is a racing sport involving specialized high performance snowmobiles on an artificially-made tracks.

Jamie said his son had just recently been accepted to attend the Colorado Sled Style camp to train for the Winter X-Games – an extreme sporting event run by U.S. broadcaster ESPN.

He doesn't think Darryl, who has been in and out of consciousness since the accident, will ever walk again should he survive his injuries.

Jamie was thankful for the outpouring of support for his son in recent days. Many messages have been posted on Facebook and other websites since the accident.

"For a father to see the outpouring of friends is unbelievable," said Jamie.