Zakaria Chihab was one of Lebanon’s top wrestlers of the 1950s. A bantamweight, he claimed his first major international prize at the inaugural 1951 Mediterranean Games, where he took bronze in the Greco-Roman division. The following year he repeated this feat at the Helsinki Olympics, becoming one of the first Lebanese Olympic medalists (alongside Khalil Taha, who took bronze in the Greco-Roman welterweight category that same day). He was then sixth at the 1953 World Championships, but won one more major medal, silver at the 1955 Mediterranean Games in the freestyle category, prior to his retirement. Afterwards, he ran a fitness club in Lebanon for before moving to Kuwait in 1963 to work as a coach with that country’s army team. Two of his sons were footballers with the Lebanese national squad.
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