The Rio de Janeiro Olympics kick off on August 5 for some two weeks of competitive games drawing athletes as well as audiences from around the world. As they prepare to cover the event, Reuters photographers look back on their favourite pictures from past Olympics where they captured the action on the ground as well as the participants' tears and joy that followed. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Moscow riot police prepare to move on activists during an unsacnctioned anti-Putin opposition rally at the Pushkin Square March 5, 2012 in central Moscow, Russia. Amid charges of fraud, demonstrators took to the streets a day after Vladimir Putin declared victory in Russia's presidential elections. (Photos by: Rustem Adagamov; Source: LiveJournal; Gleb Shchelkunov; Source: LiveJournal; Ilya Varlamov; Source: LiveJournal; Raskalov; Source: LiveJournal; Dmitry Chistoprudov; Source: LiveJournal)

A member of the Brotherhood of Gentlemen Legionnaires of Asturias feeds its mascot after the governing body of the “Estudiantes” brotherhood decided that penance could not be carried out in the streets due to rain on Palm Sunday in Oviedo, northern Spain, March 20, 2016. (Photo by Eloy Alonso/Reuters)

A Filipino flagellant crawls along a street on Maundy Thursday, in San Fernando city, Pampanga Province, north of Manila, Philippines, 24 March 2016. Many Filipino Catholic penitents mark the Holy Week by submitting to different forms of physical penance in the hopes of being forgiven for their sins. (Photo by Francis R. Malasig/EPA)

Visitors gather outside Ark Encounter, a 100 million USD, 510-foot-long re-creation of Noah's Ark in Williamstown Kentucky, USA, 05 July 2016. Ark Encounter is the brainchild of Australian-born creationist Ken Ham; it was built with the help of state tax incentives and the sale of 62 million USD in junk bonds. (Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)

One of the largest paddle steamers afloat in Britain is the H.M.S. Royal Eagle, former peacetime excursion boat which carried passengers on pleasure jaunts from Tower Bridge to Southend, Ramscate and Margate. Commissioned two years ago as a warship of the Royal Navy, the craft has been in action 52 times against enemy aircraft. The Eagle took part in the evacuation from Dunkirk where she was dive-bombed 48 times and brought home nearly 3,000 British troops. Members of the crew cleaning the paddle boxes of H.M.S. Royal Eagle in London on January 18, 1943. (Photo by AP Photo)

A Nepalese devotee offers ritual prayer at the Bank of Bagmati River of Pashupatinath Temple during Rishi Panchami Festival celebrations at Kathmandu, Nepal on Sunday, August 23, 2020. Rishi Panchami festival is celebrated as the last day of three-day long Teej Festival. The Teej festival is celebrated by Hindu women in Nepal as well as in some parts of India. (Photo by Narayan Maharjan/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

A receptionist dinosaur robot performs at the new robot hotel, aptly called Henn na Hotel or Weird Hotel, in Sasebo, southwestern Japan, Wednesday, July 15, 2015. From the receptionist that does the check-in and check-out to the porter that’s a stand-on-wheels taking luggage up to the room, the hotel, that is run as part of Huis Ten Bosch amusement park, is “manned” almost totally by robots to save labor costs. (Photo by Shizuo Kambayashi/AP Photo)