Bearded & Tschorn: Where’s Mother Russia in the battle of the beards?

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Phil Olsen, captain of Beard Team USA, recently told me that in 1999, when he first stumbled across the World Beard and Moustache Championships (held that year in Ystad, Sweden), he was half the U.S. team.

‘Americans were underrepresented – it was me and one other guy,’ he said. ‘I thought, ‘How could it be a true world championship if the Americans aren’t well represented?’ ‘

Since then, the Lake Tahoe, Calif., retired lawyer and part-time judge has made it his goal to grow the home team as big and full as the black beard that hangs from his chin (Olsen is competing in the Garibaldi category in Anchorage). As of Wednesday, there were 154 Americans registered -- more than the total number of participants from all nations in 1999.

Still, only a handful of countries have been traditionally represented in the competition -- which has been long dominated by the Germans, who, as Olsen notes, created the contest and defined most of the now 18 facial hair categories on which contestants will be judged.

But according to the host club’s blog, the international facial hair fraternity is on track to expand its ranks by at least three nations this year -- Spain, Australia and Canada. That would make it, as the poster (who goes by the name ‘furface’) notes: ‘the most diverse grouping of any world championships.’ Today the country count stands at 12.

Furface also laments that, to date, no one from Russia (just across the Bering Strait) has deigned to join the follicular follies. Can it be there is not one competition-worthy piece of facial hair in all of Mother Russia? Not a single Stalinesque ‘stache, Lenin-era Musketeer or tsarish set of chin whiskers? There’s got to be.

Moscow, the world awaits.

-- Adam Tschorn

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Read more Bearded & Tschorn: the Road to the World Beard and Moustache Championships

Photos: From top, Josef Stalin (Credit: Alexey Sazonov/AFP/Getty Images); Vladimir Lenin (Credit: Vlyacheslav Oseledko/AFP/Getty Images); and Tsar Nicholas II (Credit: National Geographic Society Photo/NBC).