I am not very experianced or an instructor, but see this video, ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvK1ONl1CqE

After being slow to recoginise the cable break, the glider is stalled and
rotating, but the nose does not go down, so the crash is perhaps less
painfull than going in nose first.?

I hope I would have better recoginised/reacted to the break, but if not I
would have still lowered the nose more to unstall the wing and hopefully
flare the landing?????

David.

At 22:45 04 July 2009, Don Johnstone wrote:
At 19:45 04 July 2009, Derek Copeland wrote:
Nevertheless, if you get into an accidental spin, you have to make a
recovery or die, whether or not the aircraft is certified for
deliberate
spinning.

I have to take issue with that statement which nicely illustrates my
point. Knowing any recovery technique is not going to help you at all if
you spin from a low final turn, the only thing that will save you is
recognising what is happening and stopping it happening.

I would go further and say that recovery in such a situation should not
be
attempted. If you look at the video you see that the glider hit wingtip
first, which is what wound up the rotational speed, and then the nose
impacted, much of the impact was absorbed by this process and the crew
survived.
If you imagine the situation where the glider is just a little higher
and
recovery is attempted and part suceeds, what is the first thing that
stops, the rotation so instead of impacting the ground and having some
of
the the impact energy absorbed the glider hits the ground, nose first,
accelerating, known as tent pegging I believe. This is very bad news for
the crew and yet we quite happily consider recovery from spinning of
greater importance than recognition of the early signs and prevention.

Knowing the spin recovery procedure would have been of no use whatsoever
to the crew of the glider in the video.