I used to fly the A320/1 and have recently started flying the A319. Like everyone else early on I had my fair share of alarmingly 'firm' landings on the 321 for no apparent reason, and this caused me to really look into groundspeed mini which was frankly a mystery to me. It rapidly became apparent that virtually no one, including trainers really understood the approach speed calculation/gs mini function. It took me ages fiddling with a spreadsheet and equations to understand it but I think I now do!
The first thing that confused me was why do we have to input a wind into the perf approach page (known as the tower wind)? The answer is never formally given but if you fiddle with the equations using a spreadsheet the answer becomes clear. It is basically there to allow you to have the minimum possible approach speed. In essence you are saying to the system that the wind you enter is guaranteed to be there so you can pretty well forget about it. A gust in Airbus thinking is the difference between the tower wind (resolved along the runway axis) and the actual wind calculated by the IRS's. The majority 'gust' is therefore effectively added onto the approach speed so that if it disappears for any reason you will still have a healthy speed. Contrary to what all Airbus pilots imagine, the effect of increasing the tower wind is to decrease the approach speed! (next time you are flying an approach on a windy day, try it and you will find it is true). Therefore the first step to a really heavy landing is to put in the last minute wind given by ATC into the perf approach page, as you are effectively telling the aircraft to ignore that wind. When the gust that ATC have just given you disapppears there will be a big loss of air speed as the gsmini function has not added the necessary knots onto the approach speed. If anyone is interested I can send them a spreadsheet with calculations on to see how this all works.
I do not know the specifics of this unfortunate incident but it is possible that a combination of too high a tower wind, not adding the few knots to the approach speed and not dealing with the landing pitch-up has got this poor chap into trouble. As an aside, the 3 massive factors statistically that predispose an individual to having a tailstrike are low experience on type, the use of manual thrust and letting the speed decay below VLS. In a statistical sense if you avoid those 3 you are virtually guaranteed not to have a problem.
Incidentally, it was SOP at my previous company to not allow 'cadets' (ie new 509ers with about 200 hours on joining) to fly the 321 for their first year with the company. They also had extensive anti tailstrike training on tech refreshers and so on. They have never had a tailstrike yet which leads you to the conclusion that experience is key.