Oh, that American resident from Somalia? Yes, I heard. I also heard that drivelling twat Foster (a mate of A*t and D*c?) going on about him being the 'best ever distance Olympian' after he did the 5/10k double for the second time last year in Rio.
Only the blathering halfwit forgot to mention that when Lasse Viren did the same in 1972/76 he had to run semi-final heats so actually had to do double the amount of races. 
Sorry, but Turks running for Qatar, Kenyans for Denmark etc. is not really what national sport is about, it makes each nation the equivalent of a football club, paying to import talent they haven't got locally. Fiona May the 'former Briton' competing for Italy was another that springs to mind. I won't even get going on Zola Budd....
Well you shouldn't be surprised that he...erm..."forgot" about Viren. Simply because the mere mention of Viren's name probably leaves the bitter taste of Olympic failure in his mouth.
FWIW, I do agree with your point regarding what national sport is about. We could go back and forth all night, all weekend in fact mentioning God knows how many names. Ray Houghton, John Aldridge, Steve Staunton, John Barnes, Tony Grieg, Kevin Pietersen, Greg Rusedski, Chris Froome and so on.
But the bottom line is this. We live in an era where money quite often trumps national pride. The sums of money in play in modern sport are just mind-boggling. If anyone had any lingering doubts about that, then the Neymar transfer fee will almost certainly have killed them stone dead. £198 million for a bloody footballer?
That's just batshit crazy.
Being in modern sport can bring huge financial rewards. Sport is more like big business now. And to that extent, being a sportsperson is now more like being a businessman/woman. So it is really that surprising that some will forgo patriotism in favour of a better opportunity to gain worldwide exposure and possibly the considerable wealth that might emerge from that exposure? I would have to say no, it's not even remotely surprising.
If a country is willing to approach the 4th best 3000m steeplechaser in Kenya and say "hey dude, become "one of us" and we'll put 100k in your bank account" then being "a skint patriot" suddenly looks very unattractive compared to being "an unpatriotic mercenary". Blame the sport's administrators/governing bodies for creating exploitable loopholes, not the athletes. Sport helps some people get out of the ghetto and enjoy a better quality of life. It's hard to criticise someone for wanting that.
National sport in it's truest and purest sense is, in many ways, extinct. There's just too much money involved now.
