At 39, Carli Lloyd Will Be The Oldest U.S. Women's Team Player To Go To The Olympics
It's very hard for a team to win either a World Cup, soccer's crown jewel, or an Olympic gold medal. To win those championships back-to-back is "incredibly challenging," says Carli Lloyd, who will nevertheless try to pull off that feat this summer, along with the U.S. Women's national team.
Lloyd, the superstar who is now going to her fourth Olympics, is aiming to bring home the gold. When she embarks on that quest in Tokyo, she'll be 39 — the oldest player the U.S. women's national team has ever sent to the Olympics.
Only a select few teams have been able to hold both the World Cup and Olympic titles at once. Uruguay's men's team won the tournaments in 1928 and '30, for instance. Italy has also pulled off the feat. And the U.S. women, led by Mia Hamm, won gold at the 1996 Olympics before winning the women's World Cup in 1999.
Lloyd and her teammates who were just selected for the Summer Olympics hope to join that elite club, following their 2019 World Cup title with an Olympic gold. Experience is on their side — nearly the entire Olympic roster played in the Cup — but the other side of that edge is age.
"Obviously, we have a lot of experience on this roster, but we're going to need all 18 players to play a huge role in this," Lloyd says.
A third Olympic gold would put another exclamation point on Lloyd's career..
