Carli Lloyd talks shifting gears from World Cup to Olympics

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The United States has been celebrating a win in the FIFA Women's World Cup all summer long.

But less than a year away from the 2016 Summer Olympics, the USWNT is already working on putting the World Cup win in the past and focusing on the chase for a fifth gold medal.

Carli Lloyd, who thanks in part to a hat trick in the championship game won the Golden Ball award as the best player at this summer's World Cup, joined CSN's Vinnie Duber and talked about shifting gears from the World Cup celebration toward Olympic preparation.

"It's been great to be able to play a lot of games," Lloyd said of the benefits of the team's current "Victory Tour," featuring games around the country. "Even though it's called the 'Victory Tour,' the World Cup is over, and it's kind of time to switch hats and think about Olympic qualifying. These games give us another time and another game to improve and to get better. ... We're looking forward to completing the next six games, and then soon we'll be in 2016 and we'll be focusing on Olympic qualifying in February."

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Lloyd has been a member of a pair of Olympic teams that won gold medals for the United States — at the 2008 Beijing Games and the 2012 London Games — and she's looking forward to competing in the upcoming Olympic tournament as part of the 2016 Rio Games.

Competing in a World Cup and an Olympics in back-to-back years is nothing new for the team's veterans, but winning a World Cup and then competing in the Olympic tournament the following summer will be a new experience for this group.

"Well, we've never done it before, not in my career," Lloyd said. "We've usually come off of a World Cup loss and then have had to go straight into the Olympics with extra motivation. But now we've won a World Cup, but I have even more motivation to win another gold medal because teams are going to be after us, they're going to want to beat us and we're going to have to really step up our game and be better than we were at the World Cup. So it's exciting, it's pressure. Just looking forward to it."

The Olympic tournament begins Aug. 3, 2016, in Brazil. The United States women's national team will be going for its fifth gold medal in six Olympic tournaments.

Hear more from Lloyd in the video above, where she talks more about preparing for the Rio Olympics and her experience at the Team Visa Summit.

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