Nose Pitched up due the remarkable tenacity of the Nose Gear?
You think it was elevator?
The data from the report is sufficient to put a few items to bed. The pitch down at touchdown was the result of the inertial moment of the aircraft following impact of the main gear, pilot unloading of the elevator at that point exacerbated the pitch down. The spoiler rise has acted against the pitch down input by the crew initially, and then the crew has applied a large pitch up input that has lagged the spoiler pitch up effect, and exacerbated that. The pitch up at the point of the 2nd impact is mainly the result of the spoilers and the elevator input by the crew, the NLG rebound does not need to add anything much to the rates to get the outcome.
would think that the take away is to avoid large stab inputs at the touchdown point, as we as humans tend to lag the dynamics by enough to get out of sorts. It does appear that had the elevator been held in the flare position for a couple of seconds, and then just washed out towards a neutral flare, that it just would have been a write up and debriefing event.
The simulators we use in general are pretty good, but they are not always representative of the real world in all aspects, even within the normal envelope. The QTG criteria permit a substantial variance from manufacturer dynamics vs the simulators performance. The particular MD11 sim when I evaluated it a long time back was problematic in many respects, particularly given the "advanced" training that was being conducted in it. LH appears to properly acknowledge the fit for purpose issue of the MD11 sim for landing training, and that probably is justified, but has high cost and increased risk.
If you feel like putting in full forward elevator in a flare/landing, I hope it is in the latter part of a J3 rollout, and not in any large conventional gear aircraft. It would be a warning to the system that the technique being employed has associated risks.
The LH aircraft held up rather well, and the crew are indeed fortunate that the MLG/aft spar didn't fail, that would have increased the risk to life considerably. The VS of the HKG MD11 was 1650FPM (IIFC) which is not far out from the third touchdown of this event...