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

Approximately 10% of the general population is left-handed, yet a disproportionately higher percentage of left-handers is observed among athletes in various sports, including combat sports and interactive ball games. This overrepresentation is generally considered evidence of a performance advantage. However, previous studies have primarily focused on simple calculations of left-hander proportions within larger sport populations, without examining their distribution across different performance levels. Our study advances the research by conducting more in-depth distributional analyses of left-hander frequencies across various performance tiers in various sports, including fencing (épée, foil, sabre) and interactive ball games (table tennis, tennis, badminton). Our findings for fencing and table tennis reveal an average overrepresentation of left-handers across performance levels, with notably higher proportions at upper echelons. This strengthens the idea of a performance advantage for left-handedness in certain antagonistic sports beyond the evidence inferred from the traditional performance-independent analysis of overrepresentation. Left-handers’ relative athletic success is typically attributed to their opponents' unfamiliarity with left-handed action patterns due to the relative rarity of left-handers in the general population (negative frequency-dependent advantage hypothesis). However, we also raise the question of whether left-handers’ edge may partially stem from other, frequency-independent factors (innate superiority hypothesis).