Zainab Bakkour

Zainab Bakkour (Arabic: زينب بكور; born March 29, 1978, in Damascus) is a retired Syrian long-distance runner.

[1] She represented her nation Syria at the 2004 Summer Olympics, and also ran her own personal best and a national record of 17:03.60 in the women's 5000 metres at the 2000 Syrian Athletics Championships in Damascus.

[2] She was the best Syrian and Arab long-distance runner in 1990s.

Bakkour qualified as a lone female athlete for the Syrian squad in the women's 5000 metres at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, by granting a tripartite invitation from the Syrian Olympic Committee and the IAAF.

[3] She ran a seasonal best of 17:18.66 to obtain an eighteenth spot in a field of twenty registered athletes, but did not advance further in the final, trailing behind the leader Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia by a wide, two-minute gap.