Born in Ust-Kamenogorsk, she entered her first world junior competition at the age of sixteen and finished eleventh in the long jump qualifying round of the 2000 World Junior Championships in Athletics. She was more successful in the heptathlon: she finished fourth at the 2001 World Youth Championships in Athletics and went on to take the silver at the following year's World Junior Championships behind the emerging Carolina Klüft. Rypakova also became Kazakhstan's national heptathlon champion that year. She persisted with combined events and started competing on the international circuit, finishing fifth with a season's best at the Multistars competition in 2003, and she became the national indoor champion in the women's pentathlon in 2004.