Many enjoy sport, yet few achieve sporting excellence: most are ordinary people doing ordinary things on local playing fields on a wet Saturday. In this issue we focus on the health risks and benefits of exercise. No glamour, excitement, glorious triumphs, or multimillion pound endorsements—just some simple messages for your patients and mine. And there’s more to follow in the BMJ in coming weeks.

Sudden cardiac death in sport is a headline grabber. Pressure groups seek screening, distraught parents look for solutions, but science struggles to find evidence. Most of what we know of mass testing comes from Italy, where …