title: World at play.
abstract: In the fields of sports and sportsmedicine today a prime topic of conversation is the approach to training and competition taken by the Communist nations, notably the Soviet Union and East Germany. Their achievements in the Olympics and elsewhere, plus reports of their intense medical analysis and monitoring of athletes, have built something of a mystical aura about these nations. What are they doing in sports? The Physician and Sportsmedicine has obtained accounts of activity in both countries. Alois Marder, MD, currently an assistant professor at the Sports School for Elite Athletes in Cologne, West Germany, served from 1964 to 1974 as a physician attached to the Leipzig Sports Institute for Elite Athletes in East Germany. Editor-in-Chief Allan J. Ryan, MD, recently spoke at length with him about sports and sportsmedicine in East Germany. Jess Jarver, sports development officer for the Department of Tourism, Recreation and Sport for South Australia, toured the Soviet Union. Their reports follow.