The competition exists out of two separate rounds. The first round allows the competitors to perform a routine of around 2:40 minutes, after which the athletes with the twenty-four best scores perform another routine of around 4:30 minutes. In each round, the classification scores of each athlete counts towards the final ranking, with each athlete receiving two points from every judge member for every other athlete they beat. After each performance, the athletes are ranked based on their total points, receiving two classification points for their total points.
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Twenty-nine athletes qualified for the event with Evgeni Plushenko and Alexei Yagudin as the big favorites, after winning gold and silver at the world championships. They were being followed by the Americans Todd Eldredge and Timothy Goebel, who edged out Takeshi Honda and Li Yunfei for the medals. The defending silver medalist Elvis Stojko, Alexander Abt, and Li Chengjiang were among the other potential medal contenders, just like Emanuel Sandhu and Anthony Liu.
