Claude Vuichard is a former transport pilot which has flown thousands of sling operations in the swiss alps. In sling ops your are always very close to the VRS, since you have a lot of descends with 0 or nearly 0 forward speed.
If you are 100 feet or so above ground and a vrs develops, you have no chance to escape with the "collective down and gain airspeed" method, since you will crash straight forward in to ground.
But not only in sling business, also in school- and all other flights, in which flight phase is the greatest danger of vrs? Exactly, in the approach segment when you are very close to the ground. With the old method, the only influence you have, is the influence about the size of the debris field on the crash site.
With the vuichard recovery technique you have a real chance to escape from the vrs, but you have to know the signs to identify it early enough.
If i read posts from peoples who lost 5000ft, i'm wondering what they did in the meantime?!
With the mentioned R44 you have to apply right cyclic and left pedal, since you need to pull max power and keep the nose straight fwd with a lot of left pedal to create the needed TR-thrust.
If you would try to escape to the left, you will need to lower the collective to apply max right pedal. But in this case you will loose much more height!