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TORONTO — The 18 European players at the Canadian Football League’s first ever international combine are doing some heavy lifting for everyone back home.

To a man, they all know they can’t afford to drop the ball or the bar, for fear that there won’t be an equal opportunity for the next wave of Danish, German, Finnish, French, and Italian kids to bust through a door that has been opened by the global outreach program known as CFL 2.0.

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That’s why Sonny Weishaupt was so disappointed, after failing to register a single rep in the 225-pound bench press here on Saturday. It’s not as if the German quarterback is an intimidating physical presence per se, but he didn’t want to stand out for the wrong reasons in a room full of CFL scouts, coaches and general managers, not to mention commissioner Randy Ambrosie, who has been the driving force behind the league’s globalization efforts.

“We all want to look the best,” said the 26-year-old, who starts for the Grenoble Centaures in France. “We all have high expectations on ourselves. We also know that we are the pioneer group sent over so we want to show that European football is played at a competitive level and it’s not just like a joke over there, you know.