Alpine Beard Competition: Victor wins by a Hair

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Alpine Beard Competition: Victor wins by a Hair

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Contestants from Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland compete for most genuine, natural grown beard.

24 August,2011 03:55 pm

Things got pretty hairy in Chur, Switzerland, where more than 60 men went chin-to-chin to see who has the best beard.Its all part of the Alpine Beard Competition, now in its 26th year, where contestants from Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland compete to see who has the most genuine, natural grown beard.The competition gets pretty hairy. There are some beards that would make Gandalf the wizard, Merlin the magician and all three members of ZZ Top walk away humiliated.The victorious beard-wearer sometimes wins by only a hair, but there are other sub-categories to jolly old St. Nick walk away in shame.Dont win the top prize? Well, there are 14 other sub-categories, according to the Daily Mail, including goatee, sideburns freestyle, Hungarian mustache and imperial partial beard competitions.Of particular note is the freestyle section, where contestants raise the beard bar through hairspray, wax and rollers, such as this year’s winner, German hairdresser Elmar Weisser, 47, who transformed his whiskers into a Norwegian flag and a moose.But while there are nominal prizes to the best beards, the real joy of winning is the chance for these Alpine beard buffs to tell their competition, Yodel-lay-hee-in-you-face