A New Zealander is putting his award-winning facial hair on the line to break the Guinness World Record for the most straws in a beard.
Anatole Ivanow will attempt to put over 312 straws through his beard on February 23 in an attempt to beat American Joel Strasser’s 2018 record.
Ivanow started growing his beard three years ago and kept it well-groomed enough to win the Natural Full Beard to a maximum of 30 cm category at the World Beard Championships in 2019.
“I won first place at the World Beard and Moustache Championship and I was totally floored by that and then I just happened to sort of decide one day I wanted to see what else could be done here. Could I set a world record?”
As an archer Ivanow wanted to try for a record of the most arrows through a beard but the arduous process of paperwork to create a new category made him instead choose to try to beat someone else’s record.
“I decided rather than trying to do a new one I’d just do an existing one because it’s a bit of a process to make up a whole new category but if it’s just an existing category it’s just some existing paperwork and you wait a couple of months for the process so I figured yeah why not, I’ll try that one.”
He stumbled across videos online of people putting straws through their beards, including the current record holder and decided he would give it a go.
Ivanow has been using the videos for inspiration of different techniques that will hold the most straws.
He said in practice he has been able to beat the record so he is hoping to repeat his efforts on the official day.
He has also chosen to use paper straws over plastic, not because of a particular choice, rather that was all he could find in his local stores.
The world record attempt will take place in a friend’s woolshed in Roto-o-rangi, just outside Cambridge with the whole event filmed and witnessed before being sent to Guinness World Records for verification if he is successful.
