Like other archery events at the Olympics, it featured the recurve discipline.

This was followed by three elimination rounds, in which archers competed head-to-head in 18-arrow matches.

In all matches, losers were eliminated and received a final rank determined by their score in that round, with the exception of the semifinals.

Prior to this competition, the existing world and Olympic records were as follows.

Each archer fired 72 arrows, with the score from this round determining their seeding into the single-elimination tournament to follow.