He was either flying well past Va, or lost control of it and ended up well past Va.
The idea of Va is that it is a low enough speed that the wing will stall before the max G is exceeded.
This is nowadays known to be not quite foolproof, in that excessive and especially repetitive and large control inputs can break something even if flying below Va.
But in general if you keep the plane the right way up, more or less, maintain pitch attitude, and keep the speed down below Va, it should not break in any weather.