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)

An Iraqi soldier stands guard as a pipeline burns in the background after an explosion 30 kilometers (20 miles) northeast of Tikrit, Iraq, Monday, February 11, 2008. (Photo by Bassem Daham/AP Photo)

Habimana, 45, and her children walk to market to sell pottery on Idjwi island in the Democratic Republic of Congo, November 23, 2016. (Photo by Therese Di Campo/Reuters)

An airplane house is pictured in the village of Miziara, northern Lebanon May 12, 2015. Miziara prides itself on building residential homes that resemble ancient Greek temples and Egyptian ruins, one is even built in the shape of an Airbus A380. (Photo by Aziz Taher/Reuters)

A cosplayer poses for photographs at the 2015 Comic Fiesta event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, October 31, 2015. (Photo by Olivia Harris/Reuters)

Young girls attend a training session in MGFSO Olympic reserve school in Moscow on May 30, 2016. (Photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP Photo)

A Naga man carries fish in his teeth after it was stunned by dynamite, which fishermen threw in a creek between Donhe and Lahe township, in the Naga Self-Administered Zone in northwest Myanmar December 27, 2014. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

Two men look at the sea while taking part in the annual New Year's dive into the North Sea in Scheveningen, Netherlands on January 1, 2020. (Photo by Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters)