Her career highlights were the Summer Olympics gold medal in 1992 whilst representing the Unified Team, where she beat the reigning world champion Huang Zhihong of China, and her World Championship victory in 2003.

She was awarded the gold medal after Ukraine's Vita Pavlysh (Krivelyova's former Unified Team teammate) was stripped of her title for failing a drug test.

This was the second time Pavlysh was found to have taken anabolic steroids and lost a World indoor title; she was subsequently banned from athletics for life.

The IOC retested the samples from the 2004 Olympics and diagnosed a positive test.

Krivelyova lost her third place to Nadzeya Ostapchuk (the bronze medal was not awarded).