Authorised Neutral Athletes at the 2017 World Championships in Athletics

Authorised Neutral Athletes at the 2017 World Championships in Athletics
The flag used by the Authorised Neutral Athletes
IAAF code	ANA
in London, United Kingdom 4–13 August 2017
Competitors	19 (12 men and 7 women) in 14 events
Medals Ranked 9th	Gold 1 Silver 5 Bronze 0 Total 6
World Championships in Athletics appearances (overview)
2017
Other related appearances
Soviet Union (URS) (1983–1991)  Russia (RUS) (1993–2015)

The Authorised Neutral Athletes are Russian athletes who are permitted to compete in the 2017 World Championships in Athletics by special permission, despite the IAAF's suspension of the Russian Athletic Federation. In order to compete, Russian athletes must demonstrate that they were not involved in the doping scandal that precipitated Russia's suspension from international athletics.

In July 2016, Richard McLaren presented the report of the WADA Commission in Toronto, Ontario, indicating systematic state-sponsored subversion of the drug testing processes by the government of Russia during and subsequent to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. In December 2016, he published the second part of his report on doping in Russia.

Some Russians have called the allegations an anti-Russian plot while others consider that Russia was "just doing what the rest of the world does". Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia had "never supported any violations in sport, we have never supported it at the state level, and we will never support this" and that the allegations were part of an "anti-Russia policy" by the West. Aleksei Pushkov, chairman of Russia's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said that the IAAF's decision to uphold its ban was "an act of political revenge against Russia for its independent foreign policy." A member of Russia's parliament, Vadim Dengin, stated, "The entire doping scandal is a pure falsification, invented to discredit and humiliate Russia." After the Court of Arbitration for Sport turned down an appeal by Russian athletes, pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva wrote, "Let all those pseudo clean foreign athletes breathe a sigh of relief and win their pseudo gold medals in our absence. They always did fear strength." The Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the ruling a "crime against sport". A poll by the Levada Center found that 14% of Russians believed that the country's athletes had doped in Sochi, 71% did not believe WADA's reports, and 15% decided not to answer.