(Sports Focus) Over 40 positive cases found in China's anti-doping fight last year

The number of last year's positive cases had a sharp rise due to the provincial sports meets, said China's anti-doping authorities on Wednesday.

In 2014, a total of 48 doping violations took place in 15,055 doping tests that included 14,562 urine tests and 493 blood tests and 26 came from provincial games. In 2013, the total number of doping violation was 29.

China's anti-doping chief Jiang Zhixue said the 26 provincial-level sports meets explained the rise in doping cases.

"When provicial-level sport meets are held, doping cases often increase a lot," he said at the annual national anti-doping meeting participated by officials from sports associations and provicial sport bureaus.

In China's state-run sport system, most provinces hold local sports meets every four years.

Provicial games serve as a talent pool for each province to select youngsers with potentials for the National Games.

Jiang admitted that unlike the national team athletes, young athletes in lower levels lack of sufficient supervision and doping tests.

"Athletes in the provincial games are very young, many of them are minors. Considering almost all the doping violations are intentional, we should pay much more attention to the group in terms of anti-doping fight," he added.

Jiang said more than 130,000 young athletes and their entourages received anti-doping education and took written tests prior to the provicial sports meets.

Furthermore, the sports authorities will add anti-doping lessons into sports school curriculum while students at colleges and universities will also receive anti-doping education. Endi