At the 1981 World Championships, Ivanova placed 13th in the compulsory figures, 4th in the short program, and 13th in the free skate, and finished 12th overall.

She won the Moscow News Trophy in the fall of 1982, completing a clean triple-triple jump combination.

[citation needed] She returned to international competition in time for the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, where she won bronze.

[3] She was the only ladies' single skater to win an Olympic medal for the Soviet Union, the Unified Team or Russia until Irina Slutskaya won silver in 2002.

After her death, the chairman of the Russian Figure Skating Federation, Valentin Piseev, told the press that Ivanova had been suffering from alcoholism, stating "Ivanova became addicted to alcohol in recent years and underwent several treatments, but with no visible results.