The competition exists out of two separate rounds. The first round allows the competitors to perform a routine of around 2:50 minutes, after which the athletes with the sixteen best scores perform another routine of around 4:30 minutes. The pair with the best score after two rounds is the winner.
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Twenty pairs qualified for the event, with defending bronze medalists and Grand Prix winners Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy as one of the big favorites. Their biggest competition would come from the host country, with the pairs of Tatiana Volosozhar/Maxim Trankov, Ksenia Stolbova/Fedor Klimov, and Vera Bazarova/Yuli Larionov sweeping the medals at the European championships. Pang Qing and Tong Jian won the bronze medal in Vancouver and would once again be a pair to look at, just like the other Chinese duo of former silver medalist Zhang Hao and Peng Cheng. The American continent was represented well by Canada, with Meagan Duhamel/Eric Radford and Kirsten Moore-Towers/Dylan Moscovitch having completed the lineup for the Grand Prix finals. Other potential outsiders for a medal were Marissa Castelli and Simon Shnapir, after winning the bronze medal in the team event, and Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres.
