Spanish basketball star Rudy Fernandez said on Wednesday that he was optimistic he and his team-mates could defend World Basketball crown that they won four years ago.

2006 saw the Spanish basketball team win the World Basketball championships in Japan. That triumph helped the country bounce back after the football team had lost in the last 16 in the 2006 World Cup.

Now of course the football team has just been crowned as World Champions and the basketball players want to help give their country what would be an incredible World double.

The squad has just begun preparation for the 2010 World Championship, which begins in Turkey on August 25 and hopes are high of a repeat success.

"We are not going to be satisfied with just a medal, I am voting for us to win gold," Fernandez, who plays for Portland Oregon in the NBA, told sports paper Diario AS.

"We have very good feelings at the moment because we have a strong team and we are going to compete for the title," he said. "We are under no extra pressure for being the reigning Champions, in fact it is an honor that the other teams are paying so much attention to us," he added.

The Spanish are without star player Pau Gasol, who will miss the event because of physical problems, but his brother Marc, another NBA star with the Memphis Grizzlies, is in the squad.

"Pau has been a reference for us all, but he is not here now and the important players are those of us who are here," said Marc.

"We have all to work hard to overcome his absence, but we should not feel any extra pressure because he is not here. We have to be humble as defending champions, because we all start from scratch. This is a new competition and all of the teams are different," he said.

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