Update | Doping on the rise in China

Biological passports for Chinese athletes caught their first suspected cheat as the country's anti-doping authorities announced that violations were on the rise ahead of the National Games.

Eight athletes tested positive in the second quarter of the year, China's Anti-Doping Agency (Chinada) said. Twelve positives have been registered this year, matching the total number of violations in 2012.

Their names were not announced, but Chinada did reveal that Wang Jiali, the 2010 Beijing Marathon winner and 2012 national marathon champion, was banned because of anomalies in her biological passport, the first athlete caught cheating by this method of detection.

Biological passports monitor selected parameters over time that indirectly reveal the effects of doping rather than the doping substance itself.

Wang, 27, has been suspended since February after failing to explain anomalies in data from blood samples collected between May 2012 and January 2013.

"The number of positive cases has largely increased compared with that of last year, which sent us a warning," anti-doping chief He Zhenwen told Xinhua.

Zhao Jian, a deputy director of the anti-doping agency, said of the biological passport scheme, which was introduced in China in 2012: "The agency has been extremely prudent and the whole testing process has strictly followed international rules on using the new anti-doping scheme."