 With three European individual championships and three individual world medals, Irina Privalova had been a formidable competitor during most of the 1990s but had not yet won an outdoor world championship gold medal.In 2000, she gambled successfully and switched to the 400 m hurdles discipline winning the Olympic title in Sydney 2000 in 53.02 s and a bronze in the 4 x 400 m relay team for Russia.Irina Privalova is currently the world indoor record holder in the 50 m (5.96 s), 60 m (6.92 s) sprints.