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)

Ukrainians jump over a bonfire in Kiev, Ukraine, 06 July 2019, as they celebrate the traditional pagan holiday of Ivana Kupala. Ivana Kupala is celebrated, during the summer solstice, on the shortest night of the year, marking the beginning of summer and is celebrated in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and Russia. People sing and dance around bonfires, play games and perform traditional rituals. Young people jump over bonfires in order to test their bravery. Couples holding hands jump over the flames to test their love. If the couple does not succeed it is predicted to split up. Traditionally, children and young unmarried women wear wreaths of wild flowers on their heads to symbolize purity. (Photo by Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA/EFE)

Gymnast Ahmad al-Sawas performs gymnastic moves near damaged buildings in the rebel-held Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria March 26, 2016. As Syrian gymnast Ahmad al-Sawas watched his country fall apart, his Olympic dream collapsed too. The last national champion before the fighting began, he knew that supporting the anti-government side in the five-year-old civil war would prevent him from being selected for the Rio Games. (Photo by Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters)

Natalie Dormer attends the mtvU Fandom Awards at MTV Fan Fest at Comic-Con, July 24, 2014, in San Diego. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision for MTV/AP Images)

Veterinarians and biologists from the Quito Zoo and the Andean Condor Foundation fit a tracking collar that juvenile Andean bear Tupak will wear for the next four years, prior to his reintroduction into the wild, after the bear's life was deemed in danger due to proximity to humans, in Quito, Ecuador on March 31, 2024. (Photo by Karen Toro/Reuters)

A brown-hooded kingfisher sits on a branch with a freshly caught frog in it's beak. Riaan Marais who took the photo said, “We were doing a boat safari on the Rufiji river in Selous Game Reserve, Tanzania when I spotted the bird with the frog on an overhanging branch on the river bank. It most probably caught the frog in the reeds along the river’s edge as this is where these frogs stay. The kingfisher must have caught the Common Reed Frog just before I took the image, as the frog was still alive, I had a brief moment to take the image before the bird flew off with the frog”. (Photo by Riaan Marais/Solent News and Photo Agency)

Performers dressed as Pikachu, the popular animation Pokemon series character, perform in the Pikachu parade in Yokohama on August 7, 2016. Some 50 life-size Pikachu characters, the most famous from the Pokemon game, marched along the city’s waterfront street as visitors took mobile phone pictures and videos of them in scorching sunshine. Some participants said they attended the event to search for rare characters of Pokemon – a word short for “pocket monster” – for the megahit smartphone app, which was launched in several countries around the world last month. (Photo by Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP Photo)