He competed for a country that had not yet decided to count him as a member of it.

He carried the American flag in the sense that he competed on the American team, but the legal and political relationship between that flag and the man who carried it was not the straightforward one that the celebration implied.

This context does not change the specific legal mechanism of the disqualification — the amateurism rule applied to all Olympic athletes regardless of citizenship status.

But it adds a layer of meaning to the question of what was being taken from him, and from whom.