"One answer to this question is: Sports! But not at all types of sport. Their advantage is specifically in so-called antagonistic sports, in which two people compete with each other. These include all sorts of interactive ball games like tennis, table tennis, or badminton, but also various types of sports that involve fighting between two people, like boxing or fencing. In general, 10.6% of people are left-handed."
"A new study focused on the left-hander advantage in antagonistic sports has now analyzed this phenomenon in a more advanced way. The study, entitled "Prevalence of left-handers and their role in antagonistic sports: beyond mere counts towards a more in-depth distributional analysis of ranking data," was just published in the scientific journal Royal Society Open Science ( Simon and co-workers, 2025). Unlike previous studies, the scientists who conducted this study characterized athletes according to different performance levels."
Data from more than 15,000 elite athletes across antagonistic sports were analyzed to assess left-hander prevalence and performance distribution. Antagonistic sports involve direct interaction between two competitors and include racket sports, interactive ball games, and combat sports. The general population prevalence of left-handedness is about 10.6%, but left-handers appear more common among athletes in these interactive sports. Athletes were characterized by performance levels to determine whether overrepresentation extended to higher-ranked competitors. Overrepresentation of left-handers was particularly pronounced among highly successful fencers and table tennis players, confirming an advantage in those sports.
Read at Psychology Today
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