A year later, in 2002, she won another gold medal at the 2002 European Championship in Munich.

The next major sporting event she took part in was the 2004 Athens Olympics where she finished second.

The winner was the home hero Athanasia Tsoumeleka, who deeply moved the ecstatic Greek crowd by getting her country's first ever medal in the event (time 1:29:12).

[citation needed] Ivanova was stripped of her silver medal in the 10 kilometer walk at the 1997 World Championships in Athletics after she had tested positive for stanozolol, and she was banned for two years.

She is part of a group of over a dozen elite Russian race walkers, all coached by Viktor Chegin to receive doping bans.