The Nobel prize is awarded for academic, cultural, or scientific advances. If at any point the decision is influenced by your nationality, birth place, eye color, or anything other than the intellectual achievements mentioned earlier than it is not fair and square. If all other things equal you get the prize for coming from a certain country it is not fair.

The implication was clearly that the particular "home" advantage made the difference and without it the person wouldn't have won. And the comment sounded like "I'm not saying it was unfair but it was unfair".

P.S. In sports you usually play both home and away to even out that unfair advantage. Big one time matches might even be held on neutral ground for the same reason.

Let's not play on semantics here. It's common sense not to suggest something is fair but then imply someone's nationality made the difference. I'm not saying I know nationality doesn't make a difference when awarding a Nobel prize. Just that if it does, then it wasn't fair.