Neck in neck — the race for Nobels

It’s been a long race, but, as the racers round the final bend and head into the home stretch,… It’s been a long race, but, as the racers round the final bend and head into the home stretch, the results are becoming clear, at least to oddsmakers.

No, we’re not talking about some horse race or the November elections; we’re talking about the Nobel Peace Prizes, which will be awarded in Oslo, Norway, today. The record 194 nominations include President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Pope John Paul II and former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, though of those, Blix is the most favored to win.

Past winners of the world’s most prestigious peace prize include former President Jimmy Carter, Doctors Without Borders and, amid controversy, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Proving that people will bet on anything, international oddsmakers are favoring those nominees who’ve fought against weapons of mass destruction programs — those things that weren’t in Iraq — and especially those who’ve fought against nuclear proliferation, according to The Associated Press.

While we at The Pitt News aren’t bettors ourselves, we do have some predictions as to who will get the approximately $1.25 million prize:

Running ahead of the pack is Mohamed ElBaradei, current head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which Blix used to head. Oddsmakers have ElBaradei edging Blix by a nose, but we’d put our money on Blix, considering Blix’s name-recognition and Wednesday’s report that there were no WMDs in Iraq — something that Blix had asserted repeatedly. In fact, we’ve picked ElBaradei as the Smarty Jones of the Nobel Prizes; while he’s favored heavily, the prize will go to someone else.

For our dark-horse pick, we favor former Czech president Vaclav Havel, for smoothing out the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and for being cool enough that Samuel Beckett dedicated a play to him.

Now, for every race, after we pick the winner and the dark horse, there’s always the pick we make based on instinct — or how cool the contestant’s name is. Here, we’ve selected Save the Children, which has been nominated for its work rehabilitating child soldiers.

Lastly, for our long shot, we pick, not Bush — who is running at 26-1 odds, according to Centrebet, an Australian bookmaker — but Blair, who’s at 50-1, and could come through, because of his ability to coherently justify invading Iraq.

Of course, if it rains, all bets are off.