I would almost expect that to be the case at this event regardless of what boat is used.

High gusty winds, steep choppy seas, and experienced sailors who regularly push the performance envelope on boat design.

Also, throw in the fact there are no chicken lines, footstraps, or even non-skid (other than factory spec) strips.

I would venture a guess that sailors used to using chicken lines, footstraps, etc. are used to driving the boats this hard, but NOT used to sliding all over them when the boat stuffs into the back of a big wave, or gets slammed with a huge puff with the spin up.

I'm interested to find out why there have been a few booms break during pitchpoles, but no spin poles/snuffers (of course, I'm not there so I don't know if this is the case). Did the crew hit the boom during the maneuver?

I could see a 170+ lb person striking the boom (under heavy mainsheet tension) on the side during a capsize/pitchpole causing major problems....