“I WILL never quit”

These are the inspirational words of a brave and determined young Hampshire stuntman adjusting to life as a quadriplegic.

Talented Jay Young badly damaged his spinal cord during a show rehearsal in Legoland, Windsor, in April.

But today, in an exclusive interview, the 22-year-old from Southampton vowed he would not be beaten.

Jay told the Daily Echo: “I am very determined. I will never quit, I have never lost before and I’ve never been defeated.”

The popular former Taunton’s College student celebrates his 23rd birthday tomorrow and is looking ahead to a life he could never have imagined before the accident.

Jay, from West End, landed on his head while practising a back flip routine and was airlifted to hospital where he began losing feelings in his limbs.

Tests soon revealed he had severed his spinal cord.

Mum Mandy White, 47, who kept vigil by his bedside from the start, recalls the life-changing moment a doctor at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital told Jay he would never walk again.

The 41-year-old from Freemantle, Southampton, had just stepped away for a moment when she heard him call out.

She said: “He was shouting ‘Mum, Mum!’ and I went running in and he said: ‘Tell him not to tell me that.’ But the doctor said ‘I am very sorry, he is paralysed from the neck down’.

“Jay then said: ‘How I am going to live like this?

“To be active like that all day every day for as long as you can remember and to suddenly have that taken away in a split second is difficult, Jay told me.

“But I told him he still had the most important thing, his heart to live and his head to think.”

Jay is receiving treatment in the Odstock spinal unit in Salisbury. He is undergoing physiotherapy and has been practising operating a chin-operated wheelchair.

In November he moves to an interim care home while he finds his own specially adapted home with childhood sweetheart Jess Smith, whom he describes as “amazing”.

Twenty-three-year-old Jess, a sports therapist from Eastleigh, has been taking it in turns with Mandy to stay at Jay’s bedside.

She said: “Jay is still Jay. It has been very frustrating for him but he still has his personality.”

Mandy added: “It is tremendous how he has kept his attitude so positive.”

After a brief period of denial, Jay accepts he has to adjust.

He said: “It’s about getting to grasp with things. In my head I am still me, but it’s the physical side of me that’s not going to work.”

Nonetheless, he is determined to live life to the full – including a charity skydive.

He said: “The only thing with me was that I was so active. I am just jealous at my mates still doing everything I would have done and I can’t do.”

He has been a gymnast since three years old and he also played football for Brockenhurst and Totton.

His abilities soon steered him towards a stuntman career, following in the footsteps of his older brother Lewis, who worked on films including Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter.

With work secured in Legoland, he hoped other jobs would follow.

Despite his injuries Jay said he did not regret being a stuntman.

He said: “I loved it, it was the best job I had.”

Family, friends and well-wishers are now planning fundraising days to pay for specialist equipment for Jay.