The competition exists out of three separate rounds. All athletes compete in the first round, in which they perform a compulsory routine. The second round allows the competitors to perform a routine of a maximum of 2:00 minutes, after which all athletes perform another routine of around 4:30 minutes. The scores are based on the individual rankings of the judges, with each position earning one point. In each round, athletes are ranked based on these ordinal points. The athlete with the fewest classification places after three rounds wins the competition.
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Seventeen athletes qualified for the event in which Vladimir Kovalev, Robin Cousins, Jan Hoffman, and Charles Tickner were expected to be the big medal contenders and favorites for the title. The four competitors made up the top four of the most recent world championships with a gap to Scott Cramer, who did not compete at the Olympic Games. David Santee was third after the compulsory program, but dropped down to eighth after three performances and would only be one of the outsiders in Lake Placid. Other outsiders included Igor Bobrin, Fumio Igarashi, and Hermann Schulz.
