Prevalence of left-handers and their role in antagonistic sports: beyond mere counts toward more in-depth distributional analysis of ranking data

About 10% of people are left-handed, but left-handers are more common in certain sports – especially those involving direct, one-on-one competition, like combat and racket sports. In this study, we examined how left-handers are represented across different skill levels in sports such as fencing, table tennis, tennis, and badminton. We found that left-handers are not only overrepresented among athletes in several of these sports, but that this overrepresentation is even more pronounced at the highest performance levels. This strengthens the idea that left-handedness offers a performance edge in certain sports. Our findings also prompt discussion of potential explanations for this advantage.