The Olympiad movement is an ambitious institutional project of Russian education, which makes it possible to increase its competitiveness in the national and global space. For its participants, the Olympic victories, despite the difficulties of preparation and the need to attract various resources, provide opportunities to meet a wide range of needs -from self-realization to pragmatic reasons, i.e. admission to budget places in prestigious universities of the country. Meanwhile, the implementation of the goals of the Olympiad project is often « sugarcoated», hiding various types of contradictions. Such «pitfalls» can reduce the social effectiveness of this movement and undermine trust in its potential, ability to improve the quality of Russian education, to overcome the educational failure of students. The purpose of the article is to study how involving of young students in the Olympiad movement insluences on their educational success. The empirical basis of the article is the data of the sociological study «Transfer of human capital of educational communities: from failure to success», conducted in the Sverdlovsk region in 2019-2021, The study applied the methods of expert survey, focus groups, mass survey of students (schoolchildren, college and university students). Results of the study: 1. The institutional framework for the development of the Olympiad movement in Russia is considered. 2. The system of stimulating the actors of the Olympiad movement is analyzed. 3. The connection between participation in the Olympiad movement and the subsequent activity of college and university students in research activities is determined. 4. The contradictions of the implementation of the conception of the Olympiad movement in modern Russia are revealed.