The International Olympic Committee (IOC) doesn’t allow political demonstrations – but that hasn’t stopped this 18-year-old Costa Rican gymnast.

Luciana Alvarado finished her floor routine with a kneeling fist-to-the-sky gesture in what has been dubbed a Black Lives Matter tribute.

Alvarado revealed the routine was choreographed to highlight the importance of equality.

“We’re all the same — we’re all beautiful and amazing,” she told the Associated Press.

She might just have found a loophole in the policy with the IOC now including other examples of athlete activism in official highlight reels.

To Markets …

Wall Street fell from record highs overnight on regulatory fears surrounding China’s tech sector. Investors were also “risk off” as they look for signs on when the US Fed intends to begin reining in its massive stimulus program.

The local bourse followed suit, with the ASX 200 down 0.55% — or 40 points – to 7,390.8 points by 12:30pm eastern time.

 

WINNERS

Here are the best performing ASX small cap stocks in morning trade for Wednesday, July 28:

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The biggest gainer today is Classic Minerals (ASX:CLZ) up a whopping 50% after releasing its June quarterly which highlighted key drilling results from Kat Gap as the company strives towards development of its Forrestania gold project.

IGO Ltd’s (ASX:IGO) subsidiary Independence Newsearch has elected to to acquire a 51% interest in the companies’ joint venture tenements in the Fraser range after spending $1,500,000 on exploration.

IGO will spend a further $1,000,000 exploring the tenements over the next two years to increase its joint venture interest to 70%.

Industrial tech company Aurora Labs (ASX:A3D) is next, up 23% after news it’s engaged BAE Systems Maritime Australia to print trial marine components for commercial evaluation for its Hunter Class Frigate program.

Followed by Great Western Exploration (ASX:GTE) up 14% after finding a large, strong EM anomaly at its Thunder copper-gold target – which is just over 100kms from Sandfire’s (ASX:SFR) DeGrussa copper-gold operation.

And Tasman Resources (ASX:TAS) also rose 14% with news that Eden Innovations (ASX:EDE) – which its wholly owned subsidiary Noble Energy has a 30.33% stake in – has had an upswing in purchase orders for its OptiBlend dual fuel system .

OptiBlend enables diesel generator sets to run on a combination of natural gas (up to approximately 70%) thereby reducing the diesel fuel consumption down to around 30% of the total fuel requirement.

Weststar Industrial (ASX:WSI) was trailing the pack at 13% after announcing its subsidiary SIMPEC was awarded a $145 million contract for the construction of the Iron Bridge magnetite project’s wet processing plant.

And Capricorn Metals (ASX:CMM) was also up 13% on plans to acquire the 2.1 million ounce Mt Gibson gold project.

 

LOSERS

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The biggest loser was Tesoro Resources (ASX:TSO) down 34% even after releasing the maiden mineral resource estimate (MRE) for the Ternera deposit of 25.1 million tonnes at 0.8 g/t for 660,000 ounces of gold at its El Zorro project in Chile.

It was followed by  Torrens Mining (ASX:TRN) down 24% off the back of JV partner Coda Minerals (ASX:COD) releasing assays from its Emmie Bluff Deeps IOCG prospect at the Elizabeth Creek copper project in South Australia.

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