[3] She persisted with combined events and started competing on the international circuit, finishing fifth with a season's best at the Multistars competition in 2003,[4] and she became the national indoor champion in the women's pentathlon in 2004.

She made improvements, however, in the weeks following the World Cup by jumping 6.63 m (a new personal best) for second place at the Colorful Daegu Athletics Meeting.

[5] She pushed herself beyond the normal seven events at the 2006 Asian Games by winning the heptathlon gold medal with 5955 points, and then participating in the individual long jump competition.

[8] In August at the 2007 Summer Universiade, she brought her country its first ever athletics gold medal at the competition with a personal best of 6.85 m in the long jump.

[9] Three weeks later, she took part in her first ever World Championships in Athletics: she opted to contest the triple jump and she finished fourth in the qualifying.

She took part in her second outdoor world championships the following year, but she could not match her previous form and finished in tenth place overall in the 2009 women's triple jump competition with a best mark of 13.91 m. Despite this lacklustre performance on the world stage, she remained dominant in continental competition and won both the long jump and triple jump gold medals at the 2009 Asian Indoor Games (setting two Games records and helping Kazakhstan top the athletics medal table in the process).

[11] Competing at her final championships of that year, she retained her triple jump title at the 2009 Asian Athletics Championships, beating Xu Tingting and Irina Litvinenko with a jump of 14.53 m. 8 November 2012 Kazakhstan London Olympic champion Olga Rypakova got the Olympic Council of Asia award as the best Asian athlete, along with Zulfiya Chinshanlo and Ilya Ilyin.

She completed a series of personal best jumps in the final, battling against the defending champion Yargelis Savigne for the gold medal.