Studies regarding sport-related sudden cardiac death (SCD) mainly focus on competitive ath-letes; similar data are rare in the general population,especially in China.We conducted a retrospective study (from September 1998 to August 2013) to investigate the aetiological distribution and epidemiological features of sport-related SCD in Southe China.Selections of cases are based on details,and two subgroups were established: one was the sport-related SCD group,and the other was the disease-free accident victims group which was matched with the sport-related SCD group in gender,age and year of death.Among the 3770 sudden-death cases,1656 cases were SCD cases.A total of 65 cases (57 males) out of 1656 SCD cases were sport-related.The age range of the 65 sport-related SCD cases was from 12 to 68 years old with a mean (35.92 ± 14.23) years old.Only two of these cases were competitive athletes.The most common circumstances of the 65 sport-related SCD cases were heavy physical labour (46.15％) and running (30.77％).The three leading forensic diag-noses were the coronary atherosclerotic disease (CAD,28 cases),cardiomyopathy (CM,14 cases) and sudden unexplained death (7 cases).CM was the most common forensic diagno-sis in those ?35 years old,while CAD was the most common one in those >35 years old.Left anterior descending in which atherosclerotic plaques was most commonly found was the principal artery branch associated with sport-related SCD.There was a statistically signifi-cant difference in the weight of hearts between the 65 sport-related SCD cases and 65 dis-eases-free accidental cases.This study highlights the need to attract public attention to sport-related SCD and to issue a prevention strategy to the public,and to make the SCD-related genetic sequencing a routine tool in both forensic pathological examination and clinic screening.