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)

Sheriffs' deputies look at wreckage from the crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo near Cantil, California November 2, 2014. A suborbital passenger spaceship being developed by Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic company crashed during a test flight on Friday at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, killing one crew member and seriously injuring the other, officials said. (Photo by David McNew/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)

A Barbie cosplayer arrives for San Diego Comic-Con International in San Diego, California, on July 20, 2023. (Photo by Chris Delmas/AFP Photo)

It looks like a kiss but this male and female blackbird were fighting in flight in Charlton Adam, Somerset, South West England in July 2022. (Photo by Ben Pulletz/Solent News)

In this May 17, 2017 photo, cowboy cook Odair Batista carries a case with food in Corumba, the Pantanal wetlands of Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil. Dressed with leather chaps on top of their jeans, stetson hats and a machete attached to their waists, before setting off, the men finish their breakfast with Terere, an herbal “mate” beverage served ice cold in an ox drinking horn. (Photo by Eraldo Peres/AP Photo)

Angel Hall, 22, (C) and Bri Artis, 21, (R) dance in a silent disco on the fourth and final day of the Firefly Music Festival in Dover, Delaware on June 17, 2018. (Photo by Mark Makela/Reuters)