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)

“After an afternoon of hiking and exploring the caves of Rhossili Bay, West Glamorgan, we caught the sun breaking through the clouds”. (Photo by Megan Warren-Davis/The Guardian)

The giant inflatable Rubber Duck installation by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman floats on the Parramatta River, as part of the 2014 Sydney Festival, in Western Sydney, January 10, 2014. The creation is five stories tall and five stories wide and has been seen floating in various cities around the world since 2007. (Photo by Jason Reed/Reuters)

Fluffy toy panda bears as part of the art installation “Panda mie” by Italian restaurant owner Giuseppe “Pino” Fichera sit over beers at his restaurant “Pino's” to raise awareness of the COVID-19 lockdown's business impact on gastronomy in Frankfurt, Germany, November 24, 2020. (Photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)

A sanitation worker fumigates using sodium hypochlorite in an archive room to fight the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Milimani commercial courts in Nairobi, Kenya, July 17, 2020. (Photo by Baz Ratner/Reuters)

Take me away, deer, Russia. The Nenet people of Arctic Russia use reindeer and sledges as a prime mode of transport. The animals’ navigational ability means that in severe conditions they are sometimes the only hope of survival. (Photo by Kamil Nureev/Smithsonian Photo Contest)

A Ukrainian dancer of the Kyiv City Ballet company stretches prior to a performance at the Theatre de Chatelet, in Paris, Tuesday, March 8, 2022. The Kyiv City Ballet danced to a full house in Paris for the last show of a French tour that has left the company stranded after the war broke out in Ukraine. They described being physically and emotionally exhausted. Being given the opportunity to train and dance was for many a chance to focus on something other than the war. (Photo by Thibault Camus/AP Photo)

Participants at the Dubai Run at Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on November 26, 2021. (Photo by Ruel Pableo for The National)