Bradley Wiggins (Great Britain), the defending Olympic champion, qualified for winning the individual pursuit at the 2008 UCI Track Cycling World Championships.

Volodymyr Dyudya (Ukraine) qualified at the late 2007 UCI World Cup event in Sydney, winning the individual pursuit there.

Jenning Huizenga (Netherlands), Taylor Phinney (United States), Phillip Thuaux (Australia), Sergi Escobar Roure (Spain), Alexander Serov (Russia), and David O'Loughlin (Ireland) qualified based on UCI rankings.

While the objective is ostensibly to catch the other rider on the track, victory is most commonly determined by the faster time to cover 4,000 meters.

The winners of each individual heat did not matter in the preliminaries - it was instead the overall eight fastest times which would advance to the match round.