The competition exists out of four runs over two consecutive days. The fastest 20 athletes after three runs are allowed to participate in the last (fourth) run. The competitor with the lowest aggregate time for all four runs is the winner.
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Twenty-five athletes qualified for the event with Kimberley Bos as the winner of the most recent World Cup, though there were many other athletes for the race for gold. Bos was the first Dutch athlete to win the World Cup in skeleton after finishing in the top 3 in six out of eight races, leading over 2021 World Cup winnerJanine Flock, bronze medalist of the 2021 world championships Elena Nikitina, and four-time world champion Tina Hermann. Laura Deas won a bronze medal in Pyeongchang in 2018 but disappointed throughout the season, Alina Tatarychenkova and Hannah Neise ended in the top 10 of the World Cup standings as juniors, and Yulia Kanakina also ended in the top 5 of four out of eight World Cup races.
Home representative Zhao Dan was the youngest competitor in the women's skeleton and the only athlete to be under the age of 20. Hannah Neise and Alina Tararychenkova were also born in the 21st century, and were almost two years younger than the second Chinese hope Li Yuxi. Katie Uhlaender and Katie Tannenbaum were the oldest two athletes of the field, and where the American Uhlaender had been competing at the Olympic Games since 2006, Tannenbaum and the third-oldest Kellie Delka made their Olympic debuts. Uhlaender was also the only competitor to have competed at more than three editions of the Olympic Games, with Janine Flock reaching her third in Beijing, and with nine others marking their second appearance. Thirteen competitors made their Olympic debuts. Despite absence of the reigning Olympic champion, the remaining defending medalists Jacqueline Loelling and Laura Deas did qualify for the competition, just like 2014 bronze medalist Elena Nikitina, who returned from a doping ban.
Hannah Neise won Olympic gold in a sport that had not seen any Olympic gold medals for Germany before the year. After Christopher Grotheer won the men's event, Germany had now won all gold medals in the sport in Beijing, dominating the sliding events with bobsleigh and luge. Jaclyn Narracott won the first skeleton medal for Australia, after her partner Dom Parsons won bronze for Great Britain in 2018, having finished 16th in 2018. Kimberley Bos won the first medal in a sliding event for the Netherlands after becoming the first Dutch skeleton racer to compete at the Olympic Games in 2018. Time Hermann barely missed out on the medals once again, after finished fifth in 2018 and fourth in 2022, while Mirela Rahneva also improved on her performance of 2018 when she finished 12th. Katie Uhlaender and Anna Fernstaedt showed stable performances in their Olympic appearances, while defending silver medalist Jacqueline Loelling completed the top 8. Zhao Dan was the second-best debutant in the women's skeleton on ninth place.
