She competed at the European Athletics Championships for the Soviet Union in 1986 (running the heats for their bronze medal-winning team) and also for Ukraine at the 1994 edition (helping the new nation to fourth in the relay with her twin sister Antonina Slyusar).

Born in Dniprodzerzhynsk, Ukrainian SSR, she first came to prominence at the age of 21 when she won the 100 metres title at the Soviet Athletics Championships in 1984 (shared in a dead heat with Natalya Pomoshchnikova).

First she ran at the Goodwill Games in Moscow (a major sports encounter between the Soviet Union and United States during the Cold War period) she placed fifth in the individual 100 m then teamed up with Olga Zolotaryova, Maia Azarashvili and Elvira Barbashina to claim the 4 × 100 m relay silver medal behind the American women.

She was a 100 m semi-finalist and was the relay alternate, helping her nation through the heats alongside Zolotaryova, Antonina Nastoburko and Natalya Bochina, before being switched for Marina Zhirova for the final, where the Soviet Union claimed the bronze medal.

[11] At the newly established Ukrainian Athletics Championships she became the first woman to claim a 100/200 m sprint double in 1993 (a feat matched by Anzhela Kravchenko shortly after).

At the 1994 Goodwill Games in Saint Petersburg she formed a Ukrainian relay quartet with Kravchenko, Viktoriya Fomenko and her twin sister Antonina Slyusar.