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)

A photograph of Cuba's former President Fidel Castro decorates a wall inside a state-run market in Havana, March 8, 2016. (Photo by Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)

Police spraying protesters with pepper spray inside Central Station after a Black Lives Matter rally in Sydney, Australia, 06 June 2020, a protest against the deaths of Aboriginal people in custody and solidarity with the US protests for George Floyd. (Photo by James Gourley/EPA/EFE)

A hot air balloon depicting a dog that participates in the International Hot Air Balloon Festival, flies over Leon, Guanajuato state, Mexico, on November 14, 2020, amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The festival, in which 100 air balloons participate, was held without spectators to avoid crowds and prevent contagion. (Photo by Ulises Ruiz/AFP Photo)

A woman wears a mask with printed lips, amid the spread of the new coronavirus in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, April 30, 2020. (Photo by Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo)

A man in a Donald Trump mask joins hundreds of other protesters and activists as they march during a demonstration near a midtown hotel which is hosting a black-tie fund-raiser for the state Republican Party on April 14, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

A car drives through a flooded road following heavy rain in Gaza City on December 27, 2019. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP Photo)

A pro-Palestinian demonstrator reacts as she is escorted by security personnel after scuffling with an observer, as protesters in support of Palestinians in Gaza and pro-Israel counter-protesters gather at the encampment on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Los Angeles, California, U.S. April 29, 2024. (Photo by David Swanson/Reuters)