Below is the list of countries and other neutral groupings who participated in the championships and the requested number of athlete places for each.
Russian suspension Russia is currently indefinitely suspended from international competition due to a
doping scandal, and will therefore not be present at the Championships. Nevertheless, 19 Russian athletes have been allowed to participate in international competition included as "
authorised neutral athletes" at London 2017 following a long process to show that they were not directly implicated in
Russia's state doping program. These athletes include
Mariya Lasitskene (high jump),
Sergey Shubenkov (110 metres hurdles),
Ilya Shkurenev (decathlon),
Aleksandr Menkov (long jump) and
Anzhelika Sidorova (pole vault) plus names from 2016 such as
Darya Klishina (long jump)
Refugees For the first time, an
Athlete Refugee Team delegation was present at the competition, mirroring the efforts to include refugee athletes that had occurred at the
athletics at the 2016 Summer Olympics. A total of five athletes – all of them Kenya-based refugees – were entered as part of the Athlete Refugee Team, including Somalian
Ahmed Bashir Farah, Ethiopian
Kadar Omar Abdullahi, and South Sudanese middle-distance runners
Dominic Lokinyomo Lobalu,
Rose Lokonyen and
Anjelina Lohalith.
Quarantine An outbreak of
norovirus occurred at a local hotel affecting 30 athletes and officials.
Doping An anti-doping programme was overseen at the championships for the first time by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) – an independent anti-doping board within the IAAF. A total of 1513 samples were collected at the competition and were sent to
Ghent for analysis by a
World Anti-Doping Agency-accredited laboratory . The samples comprised 596 urine sample (212 of which were tested for
erythropoietin) and 917 blood samples. The blood samples were divided into two forms – 725 were taken to feed into the long-term
athlete biological passport initiative and 192 were taken specifically to identify use of
human growth hormone and erythropoiesis stimulating agents. The in-competition anti-doping scheme was complemented by a more extensive out-of-competition testing programme, which was intelligence and performance-led and amounted to over 2000 blood tests and over 3000 urine samples. An anti-doping education initiative also took place, led by the AIU and the IAAF Athletes' Commission, including an Athletes' Integrity Pledge which was taken by around 2500 athletes. Two of Ukraine's foremost athletes,
Olesya Povkh and
Olha Zemlyak, were suspended for failed doping tests immediately before the championships in London. The initial findings of the in-competition tests were that three athletes tested positive for doping, none of whom were medalists. The names of the athletes were not announced, allowing the athletes to contest the result and request a b-sample test. ==Notes==