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)

Palestinian schoolboys sit in the trunk of a car as they go to school on a rainy day in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, October 7, 2015. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

In a photo taken on November 27, 2016 a female traffic police officer directs traffic on a road in Pyongyang. Believed to be hand-picked for their looks, Pyongyang's female traffic police are a familiar sight at intersections around the capital, where traffic volumes have noticeably increased in recent years. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)

A robot, developed by start-up firm Asimov Robotics, holds a tray with face masks and sanitizer after the two robots were launched to spread awareness about the coronavirus, in Kochi, India, March 17, 2020. (Photo by Sivaram V/Reuters)

Beautician Alex Smith, 26, does the nails of Jules Aspen, 40, at the Madame Beauty salon in Chirton, North Tyneside, UK on July 13, 2020. Nail bars, beauty salons, tattoo and massage studios, physical therapy businesses, spas and piercing services are able to reopen in the latest lifting of restrictions in England. (Photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Images via Getty Images)

This photo taken on July 19, 2020 shows a security guard looking at his smartphone while water is released from the Three Gorges Dam, a gigantic hydropower project on the Yangtze river, to relieve flood pressure in Yichang, central China's Hubei province. Rising waters across central and eastern China have left over 140 people dead or missing, and floods have affected almost 24 million since the start of July, according to the ministry of emergency management. (Photo by AFP Photo/China Stringer Network)

A man sells eels caught for a meal amid a lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus, in a slum area of Yangon, Myanmar, October 21, 2020. (Photo by Shwe Paw Mya Tin/Reuters)

An injured young woman is led away after an incident at Parsons Green underground tube station in west London on September 15, 2017. Police and ambulance services said they were responding to an “incident” at Parsons Green underground station in west London on Friday, following media reports of an explosion. A Metro. co. uk reporter at the scene was quoted by the paper as saying that a white container exploded on the train and passengers had suffered facial burns. (Photo by Luke MacGregor/Reuters)