She was the gold medallist at the 1966 European Athletics Championships and a five-time national pentathlon champion.

She represented the Soviet Union at the Olympic Games twice (1968, 1972) and competed two further times at the European Athletics Championships (1969, 1971), placing in the top five at all four events but failing to win any medals.

[2] Fellow Soviet Irina Press was among the world's leading athletes at that time, meaning Tikhomirova had strong competition at national level.

[6] She ranked third internationally that season, just three points behind world leaders Ingrid Becker and Annamária Tóth.

Tikhomirova achieved a score of 4927 points and was knocked out of the bronze medal spot by Tóth and ended the competition in fourth place.

[6] In her final year of competition in 1973 she has a season's best 4754 points, which gave her a career high on the world rankings in second place behind East Germany's Burglinde Pollak.