At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Bugakova decided to drop her specialty event, the 100 m butterfly, and experiment with the 50 m freestyle. She achieved a FINA B-standard of 26.29 from the Russian Swimming Championships in Saint Petersburg. She challenged seven other swimmers in heat seven, including fellow three-time Olympian Marina Mulyayeva of Kazakhstan. Bugakova rounded out the field to last place by three seconds behind Croatia's Monika Babok with a time of 29.73 seconds. Bugakova failed to advance into the semifinals, as she placed sixty-eighth out of 92 swimmers in the preliminary heats.