As a junior, Petrova finished nineteenth at the
2001 European Cross Country Championships and reached the finals of both the
3000 metres and
5000 metres at the
2002 World Junior Championships in Athletics. Petrova won the 5000 metres
silver medal at the
2003 European Athletics U23 Championships, finishing behind Turkish runner
Elvan Abeylegesse. She returned to the event in
2005 but was beaten by
Binnaz Uslu. She won the
gold medal in
10,000 metres at the same meet. Petrova began competing in
road running events and took back-to-back wins at the
Monument Avenue 10K from 2004 and 2005. She made her marathon debut in December 2004, coming fifth at the
Honolulu Marathon. She was eighth at the 2005
Chicago Marathon and improved her best to 2:31:03. A switch to focus on the
steeplechase event proved highly successful for Petrova, as in her first year she ran a world best indoors for the 3000 m steeplechase and took the silver medal outdoors at the
2006 European Championships, finishing behind
Alesia Turava. The following year she took the steeplechase silver at the
2007 World Championships (in a personal best time of 9:09.19 minutes) and came close to a medal at the
2008 Beijing Olympics, taking fourth behind Russian teammates
Gulnara Samitova-Galkina and
Yekaterina Volkova and
Eunice Jepkorir of Kenya who took silver. Her focus switched back to marathon running in 2009, as she ran a personal best of 2:25:53 for fourth at the
Dubai Marathon and then won the
Los Angeles Marathon in May. She did not run in 2010 but returned in good form with a third-place finish at the 2011
Tokyo Marathon in February and a fifth-place finish (2:25:01) in
Berlin in September. Arkhipova competed in the
2012 Olympic Marathon in
London under her married name. She ran the first half conservatively and caught up to the leaders at about 30 kilometres. She stayed with them until the final kilometre, when she fell back into bronze medal position and ended up finishing third in a personal best of 2:23:29. ==International competitions==