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)

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

Ground personnel tend to actress Yulia Peresild after the landing of the Soyuz MS-18 reentry capsule with herself and director Klim Shipenko of the “Vyzov” (The Challenge) film crew as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky on board, in steppes southeast of Jezkazgan, Kazakhstan on October 17, 2021. (Photo by Sergei Savostyanov/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)

Britain's Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock wears Union Jack socks as he leaves with Britain's Leader of the House of Lords Baroness Evans after a cabinet meeting on Downing Street in London, Britain on January 7, 2020. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

Indian bride takes part in a mass marriage ceremony under chief minister's welfare scheme (Mukhyamantri Kanyadan Yojna) on the occasion of the Basant Panchami festival, in Bhopal, India, 30 January 2020. (Photo by Sanjeev Gupta/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A boy walks by a model of a dinosaur wearing a face mask, during a partial lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, at the Museum of Natural History in Brussels, Tuesday, May 19, 2020. Museums are hesitantly starting to reopen as the coronavirus lockdown measures are relaxed, yet experts say that one in eight in the world could potentially face permanent closure because of the pandemic. (Photo by Virginia Mayo/AP Photo)

The face of a graduating student is displayed on a tablet attached to a robot during a “cyber graduation” ceremony at a school on May 22, 2020 in Taguig, Metro Manila, Philippines. Robots represented some 179 graduating students of the Senator Rene Cayetano Science and Technology High School during a graduation ceremony that was streamed online, as mass gatherings remain prohibited in the country under the Philippine government's lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The robots were developed by alumni of the school's robotics club, which used tablets to display the faces of the graduating students as they “marched” on stage to receive their diplomas. The Philippines' Department of Health has so far reported 13,434 cases of the coronavirus in the country, with at least 846 recorded fatalities. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)