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)

Praia du Forte, Bahia. “This was the lead picture for a National Geographic story on Bahia, because it was both mysterious as well as a “geography” picture showing where the slaves arrived from Nigeria. Beach pictures seem like they should be easy to take, but for me they are actually quite difficult. Too easy to fall into cliche. When I saw the kid coming on the horse, I quickly ran to see if I could make something with a woman in a bikini that was not a bikini shot”. (Photo by David Alan Harvey/The Guardian)

Britain Football Soccer, Burnley vs Swansea City, Premier League, Turf Moor on August 13, 2016. Burnley fan with face paint outside the stadium before the match. (Photo by Ed Sykes/Reuters/Action Images/Livepic)

An Orthodox believer kisses an icon during a pilgrimage celebrating the icon of St. Nicholas in the village of Velikoretskoye in Kirov Region, Russia on June 6, 2021. At least 17 thousand pilgrims, loaded with backpacks and some of them barefoot, took part in a five-day and 150-kilometer-long journey from Kirov to the village of Velikoretskoye, according to the local media. (Photo by Alexey Malgavko/Reuters)

A woman sits by a fountain in central Moscow, Russia on June 23, 2021. On June 23, 2021, daytime temperature is expected to reach +36°C (96.8°F). An orange weather warning has been issued due to the heat wave. (Photo by Sergei Fadeichev/TASS)

First year cadets of the Vladivostok branch of Russian Internal Affairs Ministry's Far Eastern Law Institute march in formation during a ceremony to take oath of allegiance at a monument to Internal Affairs Ministry officers who lost their lives in line of duty in Vladivostok, Russia on September 24, 2021. 27 cadets took oath of allegiance during the ceremony. (Photo by Yuri Smityuk/TASS)

A participant tests his motorcycle ahead of the launch of the Rally of Morocco 2021, in the desert Zagora region, on October 7, 2021. The rally will be held from October 8 to 13, 2021. (Photo by Fadel Senna/AFP Photo)

A group of people walk on the sea wall as a man kayaks through the flooded parking lot in downtown Annapolis, Maryland, on October 29, 2021. The US National Weather Service implemented a flood watch for the cities of Baltimore and Annapolis as well as Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Howard counties. Washington, DC, and parts of Virginia faced the same alert. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP Photo)