Top 10 sporting power couples

Given the ego of the average top-class athlete, it is no surprise that not all of our top 10 are still together. But while they lasted they generated as many column inches for their relationships as they did for their exploits in the sporting theatre.

Zara Phillips, the daughter of Princess Anne, was considered a bit of a wild child in her youth with stories of boozy nights and Ann Summers sex parties hitting the tabloids. However, she seemed to settle down in 2005 when she met England rugby star Mike Tindall - a veteran of the 2003 World Cup-winning side - and went on to win the Eventing World Championship in 2006 as well as BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Tindall still plays for England and Gloucester, and despite the odd hiccup - in 2008 he was arrested for drink-driving the morning after a day out at the Cheltenham Festival with Phillips - he has seen his star rise throughout.

Those wild antics appear not to have dried up just yet, however: the morning after the pair were married at the weekend, Tindall was pictured (left) still wearing his wedding suit and looking distinctly the worse for wear...

Sporting couples can be brought together by many different things: common schedules, an appreciation of the unique pressures faced by high-profile athletes... or, occasionally, their willingness to break the rules in pursuit of gold.

Sprinter Jones became one of the biggest stars in athletics in 2000 when she won five medals at the Sydney Olympics.

Her time in Australia was marred, however, when it emerged that her then husband - an Olympic shot-putter - had tested positive for the anabolic steroid nandralone on four separate occasions before the Games.

Hunter quietly withdrew from the Olympics citing a knee injury, while Jones divorced then blasted him in her 2002 autobiography, claiming that his cheating had hurt her image as a drug-free champion.

He retaliated by claiming to have seen Jones inject performance-enhancing drugs prior to her Olympic heroics, and as the infamous BALCO scandal blew up Jones was right in the middle.

The speculation reached fever pitch when Jones's new beau, one-time 100m world record holder Tim Montgomery, was caught doping - and eventually it emerged that Jones herself had indeed been using drugs to boost her performances.

Jones and Montgomery went into downward spirals, with both ending up in prison following a cheque fraud scheme. Jones has since remarried (to Barbadian sprinter Obadele Thompson) while Montgomery is still in prison as his convictions also included heroin dealing.

Adam Scott became the envy of men all over the world when he started seeing Serbian star Ana Ivanovic two years ago.

The Aussie golfer claimed at the time that the relationship helped him - "I think it helps that she's a top sports star as she understands what I go through," he said - though his form on the course suggested otherwise as he plummeted from just outside the world's top 10 into the lower reaches of the top 100.

Ivanovic experienced a similar plummet: the former world number one was already on the slide when she hooked up with Scott, but then plummeted to outside the world's top 50 while they were together.

The pair split up in October 2010 after 18 months, with Ivanovic claiming that the split contributed to her slump in form at the end of last year. They have improved since, however, with both sportspeople now back in the world's top 20.

In 1998, Scotland and Wasps rugby star Kenny Logan started dating Gabby Yorath, a former Commonwealth gymnast and daughter of Welsh football legend Terry Yorath.

Yorath had recently started making a name for herself in TV sports reporting - not the first time that Logan had hooked up with a TV face, having spent three years as the other half of newsreader Kirsty Young.

Kenny and Gabby married in 2001, and are still together 10 years later with twin children.

This was a match-up of genuine sporting royalty. Norman and Evert won an astonishing 245 professional titles between them, and that nearly became 246 in July 2008, a year after the pair got together and just two weeks after they were married in the Bahamas. With the still-striking Evert watching him from the ropes, Norman almost sprang the golfing surprise of the century by leading the 2008 Open at Royal Birkdale going into the final round.

Norman collapsed that afternoon, and a year later his marriage collapsed as well: the pair divorced in December 2009, and less than 12 months later he married Kirsten Kutner.

The big Aussie was far from Evert's first foray into being part of a sporting power couple, however: she was engaged to fellow tennis star Jimmy Connors in the 1970s, married to British player John Lloyd for eight years, then married Olympic skier Andy Mill (with whom she has three children) in 1988 - only to see that end in a 2006 divorce.

There's obviously something about male golfers and female tennis players: Spanish golfer Sergio Garcia has had several relationships splashed over the papers, but his most high profile to-date was with five-times Grand Slam champion Martina Hingis circa 2002.

The relationship fizzled out after about a year - they were both only 22 at the time - and then, for a time at least, both saw their careers endure a similar downward spiral with Hingis even quitting tennis for two years in 2003.

The Swiss star would later get engaged to Czech tennis player Radek Stepanek, although that didn't last either, and she was also once romantically linked with former England footballer Sol Campbell.

As for other golf-tennis love matches, the latest rumours have claimed that US Open champion Rory McIlroy is developing a close "friendship" with tennis's world number one Caroline Wozniacki... watch this space!

He was one of the top ice hockey players in the world, she was a swimsuit model who also happened to get knocked out in the early rounds of few tennis tournaments.

Former NHL Hart Trophy (MVP) winner Federov claimed he married the Russian beauty in 2001 and they divorced in 2003, but, bizarrely, Kournikova has denied they ever tied the knot.

Another Russian hockey player, Pavel Bure, was also said to be "knocking around" at a similar time, with more engagement rumours surrounding him and Kournikova.

Heart-throb singer Enrique Iglesias finally ended up with Kournikova, though these days you're more likely to hear Kournikova's name mentioned during a game of Texas Hold 'Em Poker rather than a tennis match. The starting hand of an ace and a king is now known as an 'Anna Kournikova' and not just because of the initials - it's a hand that 'always looks good but rarely wins'.

Swimmer Michelle Smith delighted the Irish public at the 1996 Olympics when she came from nowhere to win three golds and a bronze. The fact that her husband and coach was Erik De Bruin - a former Dutch Olympic discus and shot putter who had been banned for steroid abuse - didn't sit right, but wasn't enough for the Irish punters to start questioning the achievements of 'Michelle their Belle'.

However, "how could we have been so naïve" was the collective response of the nation two years later when Smith was found guilty of tampering with a urine sample and nobody believed her protestations of innocence anymore.

Going back to Erik... he has twice been in court in Ireland: once in 2003 for shoplifting vitamin tablets and chicken breasts from a supermarket, and a year later for overtaking two stationary cars at temporary traffic lights. Michelle, meanwhile, has become a successful barrister and even had a law book published.

The willowy Russian tennis star hooked up with the Serbian basketball player - a mainstay of the NBA title-winning LA Lakers in 2009 and 2010 - in November 2009.

Sharapova, who had struggled with injury throughout her time with him, got engaged to her man last October, thus destroying the fantasies of legions of male fans who had pined after the woman voted "sport's most eligible bachelorette".

It's difficult for British sports fans to picture exactly what a high-profile and slightly bizarre set-up there is between Casillas and Carbonero. Put it this way, if you can imagine ITV's pitchside reporter Gabriel Clarke being married to John Terry then you'd be more or less in the right territory. Now there's a mental image you won't forget quickly...

Not that Clarke scrubs up quite as well as Carbonero, obviously, but Spanish goalkeeper and World Cup-winning skipper Casillas is as big a name as it gets on his home soil, despite playing his club football for Real Madrid rather than all-conquering Barcelona.

The pair have been together for two years, despite the ups and downs: more than once Carbonero has irked her other half with probing post-match questions about the team's (thankfully rare) lacklustre performances, while the pitchside presence of the 27-year-old journalist was even blamed, slightly ridiculously, for Spain's shock defeat by Switzerland in the group stages of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.