BY SEAN WILLIAMS

ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

JAMAICA OBSERVER

WHEN the mythological figure of Cupid pulls on his bow and lets his love-laced arrows fly, he appears to unleash them blindly.

For it seems love, in all its complexities, will find us at some point in our existence, irrespective of race, class or creed. We all, it seems, have been touched and even felled by its sheer magic at one time or another.

Hollywood archives, like no other source, classic stories of love on the silver screens. Believe it or not, many of those romantic gems are mirrors of life in the real world. In Tinseltown, in particular, love stories abound over the years of fairy-tale romances and weddings of the industry’s stars, too numerous to note. Some of them, matches made in heaven.

International sport, too, has had its fair share of the fab and glam life with love unions that create power couples. But as endearing as they seem, there’s a drawback.

Oberon Pitterson-Nattie, former Sunshine Girl and current coach of the national team, is a self-confessed love-struck woman of sport. This is so after she married Marland Nattie, a former national basketballer and administrator of the game in later years, so it’s fair to say she’s qualified to offer an opinion on love unions in sport locally and abroad.

She thinks that iconic international sporting personalities who fall in love and later marry other athletes of superstar status, or other glamour-trending individuals out of sport, come under extreme external pressure that often leads to the ruination of the love.

“The high-profile sporting figures, I think, come under a lot of pressure, as they want to keep up appearances in the public eye, so the men, for example, go for models and actresses. I believe that they are not always happy because of the pressure,” she said.

Pitterson-Nattie says she understands that it’s not easy for big-name sporting figures to maintain their personal love lives outside of the public’s eye because of their market appeal, but notes that some of them actually crave the attention and hype.

She claims she fashions her love life with hubby Marland off the opposite philosophy.

“Everybody is different, and we are not in the hype. It’s not that our relationship is low-profile, it’s just that we would not allow it to be dictated by outside influences,” Pitterson-Nattie shared.

Also, she commends two other Jamaican sporting couples for nourishing their respective love lives with exemplary conduct.

“I must say I admire Veronica (Campbell Brown) and her husband Omar; they seem to be a good couple as they are low-profile and not forced into anything they don’t want to do. They have done well to keep their relationship outside of the public glare and that’s how it ought to be.

“Also, not because they are my friends, but I think that Juliet Cuthbert and Le-Vaughn Flynn is another local sporting couple that is a shining example of how to manage a marriage,” said the former Jamaica netballer and basketballer.

Campbell Brown, an Olympic and World champion and past winner of the RJR Sports Woman of the Year Award, married her school sweetheart, Omar Brown, a top-class Jamaican 200m track athlete.

Cuthbert, an Olympic silver-medallist, exchanged vows with Flynn, a former sports journalist.

In track and field, Davian Clarke married Lacinda Golding, while Maurice Wignall tied the knot with swimmer Jhanelle Atkinson.

Looking back at her whirlwind romance with her basketball hunk, Pitterson-Nattie said the love between them grew as “we spent so much time together over the years in our sports”.

“I played netball and basketball and over time things happen. I love him for many reasons, but most of all it is his warm heart that did it,” she recalled.

She said the fact that they are a sporting couple has helped to reinforce the relationship.

“I think the fact that we are both into sports makes us a better couple because we have a shared passion – he doing his thing with basketball and I with netball. We both want to succeed at what we do, so there is understanding,” Pitterson-Nattie said.

Just some weeks ago, a glamour couple in sport, golfer Rory McIlroy engaged tennis star Caroline Wozniacki. The announcement surprised many as only recently rumours swirled that the lovebirds were about to fly in different directions.

Responding to a reporter’s question about the rumoured break-up, the Irishman responded: “My private life is private and I would like to keep it that way.”

That’s easier said than done. Glamour couples in sport will always have the paprazzi on their tail.

Football’s pin-up boy David Beckham and his popstar wife Victoria know this perhaps more then anyone else.

Other notable glam sweethearts in sport are basketball’s LeBron James and Savannah Brinson, Kobe and Vanessa Bryant, Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union and Michael Jordan and Yvette Prieto, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graff. In football, turning heads are Cristiano Ronaldo and Irina Shayk, Iker Casillas and Sara Carbonero and David and Victoria Beckham.

There are odd lovebirds too. American women’s football star Abby Wambach’s recent marriage to teammate Sarah Huffman was a shocker in some quarters.

And there are relationships that soured. Who can forget disgraced American track star Marion Jones and her rocky relationship with fellow American sprinter Tim Montgomery, both caught up in doping that led to their ruination in the sport.

In the midst of Jones’s financial problems and drug usage suspicions, Barbadian sprinter Obadele Thompson married the embattled former Olympic champion. When Jones admitted she cheated and lied through most of her athletic career, their marriage wilted under the pressure.