I was also standing next to my jet watching this on that day. It looks like he flies a "loaded roll" as he rolled over the top which also left him critically low on his practice (which I also watched the day before). I remember that the GR1 display team had a good chat with him over a beer afterwards and they discussed the requirement to unload during the rolling sequence to keep his gate height. Sadly, the rest is history...
What was even sadder was that an airport worker had smuggled his other half onto the airport and she was sitting on top of a small building on the display side. The wreckage of the Hawk landed on her - killing her. Absolutely tragic and a lesson re-learned why the display side is kept free of spectators.
So in my opinion, what might have killed Graham?
1. Not unloading during the roll over the top and then burying the nose when below gate height. You could hear him pulling through the light buffet to the heavy buffet as he realised he had run out of room to pull out.
2. I seem to recall that Graham was not a display pilot but was the company roll-demo pilot/test pilot. I suspect that he may not gone through the same rigorous work-up process that a display team normally does for a pre-season display authorisation (I might be wrong on this though).
3. The Flying Control Committee (or equivalent in Slovakia) should not have let him display after his pre-airshow display performance (again, in my personal opinion). But that is hindsight.
4. Finally, as Slovakia had just started to think about joining NATO and the company that Graham was working for was on the 'hard sell' for Gripen and Hawk. Could it have been that he was rushed into doing this display by the company to increase their sales potential?
Again, this is all my thoughts on the matter and I have no hard evidence to prove any of it. Therefore, my comments are without prejudice.
LJ