She was the most successful athlete at the 1998 Winter Olympics. However, Lazutina was banned from competition for a period of 2 years due to a positive drug test result during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Before the drug test controversy in 2002 ended her career, Lazutina earned several medals at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships.
In the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, she won five medals in skiing events: three gold, a silver and a bronze. Upon her return from the Olympics, Boris Yeltsin awarded her the title Hero of the Russian Federation. She won a total of fourteen medals, including eleven golds (5 km: (1993, 1995, 5 km + 10 km combined pursuit: 1995, 15 km: 1995, 30 km: 1999, and 4 x 5 km: 1987, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001), one silver (5 km + 10 km combined pursuit: 1993), and two bronzes (20 km: 1987 (as Larissa Ptitsyna) and 10 km: 2001). She was also the first three-time winner of the women"s 30 km event at the Holmenkollen ski festival (1995, 1998, and 2001). Lazutina was awarded the Holmenkollen medal in 1998 (shared with Fred Børre Lundberg, Alexey Prokurorov, and Harri Kirvesniemi).
