This competition exists out of two rounds, each with four teams. The two teams with the fastest times in each semifinal advance to the final, while the remaining teams advance to the B final, with confirmation of a jury. The fastest team in the final is the winner of the event.
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Eight teams qualified for the event with Hungary as the defending Olympic champion but the Netherlands as the reigning world champions. ROC was the leader of the World Cup, just a head of South Korea, with China and Canada also having won an event in the circuit. Italy and Japan completed the field as the top 8 in the World Cup.
Shogo Miyata was the youngest athlete in the field aged 19, and the Japanese speed skater was six months younger than Bence Nogradi and almost two years younger than Jens van 't Wout and Li Wenlong, as the only four athletes born after 1 January 2001, with all of them making their Olympic debuts. Veteran Charles Hamelin was to make his fifth Olympic appearance at the age of 37, with Yuri Confortola reaching this milestone aged 35. Sjinkie Knegt and Kwak Yoon-gy were also born before 1 January 1990, and both made their Olympic debuts in 2010, although Kwak missed out on the next edition in 2014. Wu Dajing, Tommaso Dotti, and Shaolin Sandor Liu made their third Olympic appearances, with eighteen athletes making their debuts in Beijing.
Canada won the gold medal in the event after winning bronze in 2018, and reclaimed the title they won in their home edition in 2010. South Korea won the silver medal after dramatically crashing out of the race in their home edition in 2018 and won their first Olympic medal in the men's relay since 2010, when they won silver behind Canada. Italy won their first medal in the event since 2002 even though the team finished fourth in 2006. 2014 Olympic champions ROC missed out on the podium by less than a hundredth of a second, and China became the second host nation in a row to miss out on the medals after crashing. Defending Olympic champion Hungary won the B final to rank sixth, with world champions from the Netherlands and Japan completing the rankings.
Canada
Italy
Japan
China
South Korea
ROC
Netherlands
