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)

Mark Dill and Brit Thacker practice acro-yoga as approximately 70,000 people from all over the world gather for the 30th annual Burning Man arts and music festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, U.S. August 29, 2016. (Photo by Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

A saddle-billed stork stands in the grassland at the Nairobi National Park near Nairobi, Kenya January 23, 2017. (Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)

In this Tuesday, February 28, 2017 photo, 3-month-old Junior Alexis Patino, son of FARC rebel Deisy Garcia, sleeps next to his mother's weapon at a rebel camp in a demobilization zone in La Carmelita, in Colombia's southwestern Putumayo state. Amid the makeshift tents and communal kitchens where Colombia's largest rebel army is preparing to lay down its weapons, a new sound is emerging: the cries of babies. (Photo by Fernando Vergara/AP Photo)

In this May 12, 2017 photo, Pupy, an African elephant, stands in the doorway of his enclosure at the former city zoo now known as Eco Parque in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A year ago the 140-year old Buenos Aires zoo closed its doors and was transformed into a park. The first director decided that the animals should be housed in buildings that reflected their countries of origin. A replica of a Hindu temple was built for the Asian elephants. (Photo by Natacha Pisarenko/AP Photo)

A performer dances at a housing exhibition in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, September 27, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A tearful Beatle lover pleads unsuccessfully with a policeman to carry her fan button to Ringo, one of the four mop-top singers who drew squeals and shrieks from more than 30,000 spectators at two Indiana State Fair shows in Indianapolis on September 4, 1964. (Photo by Bob Daugherty/AP Photo)

Labourers carry a basket packed with vegetables through a wholesale market in Kolkata, India, February 26, 2016. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)